One of life's small daily pleasures is to able to tell Siri to switch off all the lights when I go to bed. It always feels very satisfying for some strange reason.
Hopefully not Siri Dahl
Is that a dish made with lentils?
I made it for my wife once. Thought she’d like it.
What a mistake that was !!
Over salted baby food she’d worked all day and I served her that !!
Twenty years ago I had a paneer dahl in Sparkhill which still stands as the best vegetarian dish I've ever had. Proper authentic place. Not only did you have to get the wine at the corner shop, they wouldn't even handle the used bottles and you had to put them in the bin yourself.
If you ever end up in Glasgow - give "Ranjits Kitchen" a try. Basic premise is "Mums cooking, in a tiny restaurant". Absolutely nothing fancy, pretentious, difficult. No wine menu, nout. Though their salt lassi are great.
The smartphones and tablets are making people have sex less. At least 50% less. I bet most of you have sex less often than half what you did 10-15 years ago. That's why we have less babies.
Reading PB is what makes people have less sex. I bet most of you would be having sex right now if you weren’t reading this.
Sadly the wife’s asleep, and still getting over a big, so pb it is.
The smartphones and tablets are making people have sex less. At least 50% less. I bet most of you have sex less often than half what you did 10-15 years ago. That's why we have less babies.
Reading PB is what makes people have less sex. I bet most of you would be having sex right now if you weren’t reading this.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
Immigration also increases per capita wealth. Critically it increases the wealth of the average non-immigrant for reasons @Eabhal and have mentioned above. It obviously increases overall wealth too, and that's also important.
No, it does not. Lump of labour is a fallacy and per capita, it is neither beneficial nor worsening by itself on its own right.
Boosting skills allows us to have a more talented, educated and skilled workforce that improves our economy. Bringing in people to do minimum wage, unskilled works just deflates our education it does not improve it.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
Having said that, if Labour are throwing money around, getting rid of the anachronistic NHS surcharge for everyone makes sense.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
Given our 1.4 fertility rate they do, otherwise younger people will be having to pay more and more tax to fund an ageing population.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
Given our 1.4 fertility rate they do, otherwise younger people will be having to pay more and more tax to fund an ageing population.
Nobody makes individual decisions of that importance based on collective impacts or suppositions like that. "I'm having a kid to help reduce the burden on a future aging population". "I'm raising a family to save me paying less tax in 30 years". These aren't the equations people go through when deciding whether they want children or not. Even if they were I'm not sure they're particularly conducive to good parenting.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
Given our 1.4 fertility rate they do, otherwise younger people will be having to pay more and more tax to fund an ageing population.
Nobody makes individual decisions of that importance based on collective impacts or suppositions like that. "I'm having a kid to help reduce the burden on a future aging population". "I'm raising a family to save me paying less tax in 30 years". These aren't the equations people go through when deciding whether they want children or not. Even if they were I'm not sure they're particularly conducive to good parenting.
They should be directing government policy though which needs to be more pro family, and increasing child benefit for all parents eligible not just those on UC and supporting marriage. Even if we don't go down the ban abortion, ban divorce, ban women of child bearing age having full time careers, ban contraception route.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
£35-40k a year for a post-doc is a joke in STEM subjects. Another thing that hardly ever gets a mention when it comes to general university / knowledge economy, the PhD stipend is also incredibly poor now, it hasn't kept up with inflation at all over the past 20 years, its less than minimum wage now (~£20k a year outside London) and off the top of my head nearly something like £8-9k below what it should be if it had kept up with inflation. I have heard from loads of academics that they finding it really hard to convince talented UK students to stay on or recruit them for PhDs in STEM. Not only not kept up with inflation, but universities aren't cheap places to be anymore nor is student accomodation.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
£35-40k a year for a post-doc is a joke in STEM subjects. Another thing that hardly ever gets a mention when it comes to general university / knowledge economy, the PhD stipend is also incredibly poor now, it hasn't kept up with inflation at all over the past 20 years, its less than minimum wage now (£20k outside London) and off the top of my head nearly something like £8-9k below what it should be if it had kept up with inflation. I have heard from loads of academics that they finding it really hard to convince talented UK students to stay on or recruit them for PhDs in STEM. Not only not kept up with inflation, but universities aren't cheap places to be anymore nor is student accomodation.
I got £14001 in 2015 for my stipend. Luckily I had other sources of income.
I'm in Santa Monica now on business. I just tried a robotaxi for the first time and was extremely impressed after the initial 20 seconds of weirdness looking at the empty driver's seat from the passenger's side:
- extremely smooth acceleration and driving - excellent lane control - dealt with LA's lunatic drivers fine - no worry if the driver if drunk, high or tired - no need to make awkward conversation - no worries about tipping - half the price of an Uber (with an initial 30% discount)
Overall an excellent experience and I'm looking forward to them starting in London in the spring if the current government doesn't screw it up somehow.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
£35-40k a year for a post-doc is a joke in STEM subjects. Another thing that hardly ever gets a mention when it comes to general university / knowledge economy, the PhD stipend is also incredibly poor now, it hasn't kept up with inflation at all over the past 20 years, its less than minimum wage now (£20k outside London) and off the top of my head nearly something like £8-9k below what it should be if it had kept up with inflation. I have heard from loads of academics that they finding it really hard to convince talented UK students to stay on or recruit them for PhDs in STEM. Not only not kept up with inflation, but universities aren't cheap places to be anymore nor is student accomodation.
I got £14001 in 2015 for my stipend. Luckily I had other sources of income.
I believe I got ~£13k when I did mine 20+ years ago. I think the min was £12k at the time which wasn't loaddddss of money, but unis were still pretty cheap and post-grads didn't want for anything. It then just ticked up I think with inflation (but universities got a lot more expensive) and then lost peg to inflation about 10 years ago and now is miles behind..
I'm in Santa Monica now on business. I just tried a robotaxi for the first time and was extremely impressed after the initial 20 seconds of weirdness looking at the empty driver's seat from the passenger's side:
- extremely smooth acceleration and driving - excellent lane control - dealt with LA's lunatic drivers fine - no worry if the driver if drunk, high or tired - no need to make awkward conversation - no worries about tipping - half the price of an Uber (with an initial 30% discount)
Overall an excellent experience and I'm looking forward to them starting in London in the spring if the current government doesn't screw it up somehow.
The only type of taxi I use in London is the traditional black cab with someone who spent years learning The Knowledge.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
That's it in a nutshell, there's far more choice for people to live their lives now, and that won't include what kirk bosses or scripture dictates. You wouldn't find many 22 year olds doing gap years in Thailand in 1964, more likely they'd be working as a company secretary or housewife with a kid - changed days now
Surely the Conservatives should be advocating freedom of choice, and the state shouldn't be dictating what individuals do with their lives?
"Noreena Hertz We failed Gen Z on social media – we cannot fail them on AI, too If we do not want a generation whose first instinct is to confide in a machine, we as adults need to regain young people’s trust" (£)
Done a double check, its not £8k behind for PhDs, its more like £3k behind, but living costs both food but also far worse accommodation are so much higher. £8k behind inflation is post-doc money.
I'm in Santa Monica now on business. I just tried a robotaxi for the first time and was extremely impressed after the initial 20 seconds of weirdness looking at the empty driver's seat from the passenger's side:
- extremely smooth acceleration and driving - excellent lane control - dealt with LA's lunatic drivers fine - no worry if the driver if drunk, high or tired - no need to make awkward conversation - no worries about tipping - half the price of an Uber (with an initial 30% discount)
Overall an excellent experience and I'm looking forward to them starting in London in the spring if the current government doesn't screw it up somehow.
The only type of taxi I use in London is the traditional black cab with someone who spent years learning The Knowledge.
Presumably you also eat at Wimpy's, use rotary phones, fax machines and wrote that on a Commodore 64?
Done a double check, its not £8k behind for PhDs, its more like £3k behind, but living costs both food but also far worse accommodation are so much higher. £8k behind inflation is post-doc money.
By comparison, minimum wage was ~£4 per hour, now its over £12 per hour.
Done a double check, its not £8k behind for PhDs, its more like £3k behind, but living costs both food but also far worse accommodation are so much higher. £8k behind inflation is post-doc money.
By comparison, minimum wage was ~£4 per hour, now its over £12 per hour.
First minimum wage, 1998, was £3.60. This is £7.05 in today's money per BoE inflation calculator.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I agree with a lot of this
I cannot overstate how much women and couples are taking less tradtional choices over their lives throughout their 20s and 30s, and in many cases a lot of people getting into late 30s and end up not wanting to have kids. Sometimes after spending a year or two abroad travelling, or focusing more on developing their career, and other times they simply don't want to.
I think this is being undersold as many on the forum think the reasons for people not wanting to have kids is purely economic - it's not. It seems particularly prevalent amongst higher earners/university educated
People seem bemused that other people have realised that, fuck, it isn't actually the 60's and you're not foreced to have to go down the dank old man pub/social club on a Friday night, meet someone at 18, marry them at 19, have your 2.4 children by your early 20's and then spend the rest of your 50 years of married life together "for the kids" hating each other bitterly whilst you scrape together enough from your awful job down the factory to pay off the mortgage on your mouldy 3 bedroom semi all because that's what you are expected to do.
People have options, opportunities, and have found that, hey, I *don't* actually need to just churn out the next generation because that's all there is to do with this life.
Well even if they want more fun in their 20s they should certainly be starting to think of having a family in their 30s and try and find someone to marry
No, you're missing the point. People don't need to aspire to these things. If they want these things, great. If they want them but can't achieve them, that's where politics and policies should come in. If they don't want them, then that's their choice.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
Given our 1.4 fertility rate they do, otherwise younger people will be having to pay more and more tax to fund an ageing population.
Not a great sell though, is it? 'Have more kids or we will tax you more so that the current older generation can keep getting a pension at 66 and when you get to state pension age it'll be 68*, and keep paying down your student debt for as long as it takes'
I know some very intelligent people (moreso than me) who don't want kids. That's their choice. For others who don't have kids, they maybe can't. The wrong thing to do would be to judge or force them, everyone pays taxes which contribute to the education system, whether they have kids or not.
I don't think the reason the fertility rate has dropped below 1.5 is due to the lack of God in people's lives. Looking at my parents generation, a lot more women now have full time jobs than 40/50 years ago. I think that's a good thing
TL/DR; Netflix will show The Rest is Football daily during the World Cup.
I heard the deal only happened because Netflix wanted Lineker.
Could be. He is very good at his job.
The other, related, background story is the rise of podcasts (where's Leon?) which have been lucrative for producers like Goalhanger, platforms, and presenters (even PBers!).
So did Netflix want Lineker as pundit or podcast entrepreneur? Goalhanger's The Rest Is... stable dominates the scene.
F1: just about to start writing the final pre-race ramble of the season. Not been a vintage year, going to probably finish slightly red. In my defence, I did have some rotten luck. Two bets failed by about half a second, another due to Norris' only reliability failure in 2-3 years, and a third was correct in terms of prediction but because McLaren got disqualified after the podium the bet counted as red.
Anyway, now that the excuses are done, I'll get to work.
Today’s Rawnsley picks up one of our recent discussions:
In this brave new world of shattered traditional allegiances, Reform has led in every survey of opinion for more than six months. Labour and the Tories are knocking around 17 to 18 points. This degree of fragmentation is familiar to many countries with proportional representation. Brexit Britain has weirdly ended up with a more European kind of politics. Which wouldn’t be such a headache if we were not still saddled with a first-past-the-post voting system, which is less fit for purpose than ever.
Squint at the numbers a different way and you can see two big blocks. Who forms our next government could well depend on whether it is the right block or the left one which is the most splintered.
The idea of forming a ”popular front” with other parties of the left has traction among some Labour people. The appeal is that it would reduce the risk of a split on the left letting in the right. But it is near impossible to see how a bargain might be struck. [Similarly] Some Tories reckon their best hope of survival is to strike some kind of deal with Mr Farage to “unite the right”. Others fear that idea is an existential threat to the oldest of Britain’s parties. Reform reckons it will come out on top at next May’s elections to the Welsh Senedd, Scottish parliament and in English local government. A deal with the Conservatives would undercut Mr Farage’s claim to represent a clean break with the politics of the past.
The stage is being set for the next general election to be a high-stakes, high-wire, high-turnout affair in which the issue which most motivates voters is whether or not they want to see Mr Farage and his vulpine grin posing on the doorstep of Number 10. Labour strategists tell me this will suit them on the grounds that the spectre of a triumphant Farage will induce leftish voters to hold their noses and back Labour to stop it happening. It explains why Sir Keir is so keen to talk up Reform as his chief adversary and speaks of defeating them as a moral mission. But tactical voting can cut both ways. Reform strategists think they can squeeze Tory support behind their man by consolidating right-wing voters who loathe Labour.
For all the apparent fragmentation of British politics, there’s a good chance that the next general election will turn into an extremely binary affair with one central question on the ballot paper: how much does the thought of prime minister Farage terrify you?
Today’s Rawnsley picks up one of our recent discussions:
In this brave new world of shattered traditional allegiances, Reform has led in every survey of opinion for more than six months. Labour and the Tories are knocking around 17 to 18 points. This degree of fragmentation is familiar to many countries with proportional representation. Brexit Britain has weirdly ended up with a more European kind of politics. Which wouldn’t be such a headache if we were not still saddled with a first-past-the-post voting system, which is less fit for purpose than ever.
Squint at the numbers a different way and you can see two big blocks. Who forms our next government could well depend on whether it is the right block or the left one which is the most splintered.
The idea of forming a ”popular front” with other parties of the left has traction among some Labour people. The appeal is that it would reduce the risk of a split on the left letting in the right. But it is near impossible to see how a bargain might be struck. [Similarly] Some Tories reckon their best hope of survival is to strike some kind of deal with Mr Farage to “unite the right”. Others fear that idea is an existential threat to the oldest of Britain’s parties. Reform reckons it will come out on top at next May’s elections to the Welsh Senedd, Scottish parliament and in English local government. A deal with the Conservatives would undercut Mr Farage’s claim to represent a clean break with the politics of the past.
I can see them winning in Wales and English local councils. The former is about a 50/50 shot and the latter looks more or less a certainty.
It seems to say the least highly improbable that they will be the largest party in Scotland. Even coming second would be pretty seismic.
I've backed Piastri each way at 8.5 and Bearman to beat Hamilton at 1.62. Bearman has looked faster all weekend and starts with a 5 place advantage. Piastri's been looking much more competitive lately, and I think he's got a solid chance (more than the market believes) to be top 2 or even claim the win.
I've backed Piastri each way at 8.5 and Bearman to beat Hamilton at 1.62. Bearman has looked faster all weekend and starts with a 5 place advantage. Piastri's been looking much more competitive lately, and I think he's got a solid chance (more than the market believes) to be top 2 or even claim the win.
Guess where I’m going this afternoon 🏎️🏁
(I don’t have a ticket yet though, will be trying to find someone with a spare, or I might end up in the hotel sports bar across the road watching on TV.)
I've backed Piastri each way at 8.5 and Bearman to beat Hamilton at 1.62. Bearman has looked faster all weekend and starts with a 5 place advantage. Piastri's been looking much more competitive lately, and I think he's got a solid chance (more than the market believes) to be top 2 or even claim the win.
Guess where I’m going this afternoon 🏎️🏁
(I don’t have a ticket yet though, will be trying to find someone with a spare, or I might end up in the hotel sports bar across the road watching on TV.)
Hope it's a good one.
I was just running through the numbers and it seems Piastri (title) is still my best result, but Verstappen and Norris aren't too far behind. Still irked at myself for nervously hedging it too early, but green whoever gets that.
Today’s Rawnsley picks up one of our recent discussions:
In this brave new world of shattered traditional allegiances, Reform has led in every survey of opinion for more than six months. Labour and the Tories are knocking around 17 to 18 points. This degree of fragmentation is familiar to many countries with proportional representation. Brexit Britain has weirdly ended up with a more European kind of politics. Which wouldn’t be such a headache if we were not still saddled with a first-past-the-post voting system, which is less fit for purpose than ever.
Squint at the numbers a different way and you can see two big blocks. Who forms our next government could well depend on whether it is the right block or the left one which is the most splintered.
The idea of forming a ”popular front” with other parties of the left has traction among some Labour people. The appeal is that it would reduce the risk of a split on the left letting in the right. But it is near impossible to see how a bargain might be struck. [Similarly] Some Tories reckon their best hope of survival is to strike some kind of deal with Mr Farage to “unite the right”. Others fear that idea is an existential threat to the oldest of Britain’s parties. Reform reckons it will come out on top at next May’s elections to the Welsh Senedd, Scottish parliament and in English local government. A deal with the Conservatives would undercut Mr Farage’s claim to represent a clean break with the politics of the past.
The stage is being set for the next general election to be a high-stakes, high-wire, high-turnout affair in which the issue which most motivates voters is whether or not they want to see Mr Farage and his vulpine grin posing on the doorstep of Number 10. Labour strategists tell me this will suit them on the grounds that the spectre of a triumphant Farage will induce leftish voters to hold their noses and back Labour to stop it happening. It explains why Sir Keir is so keen to talk up Reform as his chief adversary and speaks of defeating them as a moral mission. But tactical voting can cut both ways. Reform strategists think they can squeeze Tory support behind their man by consolidating right-wing voters who loathe Labour.
For all the apparent fragmentation of British politics, there’s a good chance that the next general election will turn into an extremely binary affair with one central question on the ballot paper: how much does the thought of prime minister Farage terrify you?
The centre right and centre left have more in common with each other than they do with the more extreme parts of their own wing. Language in politics is deceptive.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
Immigration also increases per capita wealth. Critically it increases the wealth of the average non-immigrant for reasons @Eabhal and have mentioned above. It obviously increases overall wealth too, and that's also important.
No, it does not. Lump of labour is a fallacy and per capita, it is neither beneficial nor worsening by itself on its own right.
Boosting skills allows us to have a more talented, educated and skilled workforce that improves our economy. Bringing in people to do minimum wage, unskilled works just deflates our education it does not improve it.
Education, education, education is key.
For once I agree with you, immigration where there are major skills shortages and people work may help but in general untrammelled amounts of immigrants and multiple family member setc are a big drain on the country. All the woke do gooders pretend it is a great thing.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
Should the government bale out University (Vice Chancellors) of their inability to run their operations within the financial straightjacket while paying themselves high salaries. If they want to f**k up an operation and pay themselves bonuses, they should have joined a utility like a water company.
Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
Should the government bale out University (Vice Chancellors) of their inability to run their operations within the financial straightjacket while paying themselves high salaries. If they want to f**k up an operation and pay themselves bonuses, they should have joined a utility like a water company.
Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.
I despise Vice Chancellors with all my heart, but the current financial situation is at least as much due to government policy as to their greed and ineptitude.
If you order them to take as many students as they can, including from overseas, and make them build accommodation to cope, then cut funding for domestic students, arbitrarily withdraw visa programmes because of drunken lies by some Fascist hack in the Daily Wail, then cut funding for research, then freeze domestic payments, then whack up taxes, you can't be surprised if the numbers end up not adding up.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
If there was an industry ripe for being turned upside-down by technology, it would be undergraduate degrees.
Instead, we have a system of institutional and regulatory capture, selling scarcity by the admissions process, for teenagers to spend three years racking up debt that can’t even be dismissed by bankruptcy despite usurious interest rates.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.
New taxes are being added to lots of industries over the last few years - banks, energy, betting, private schools to name just a few - because the public cannot cope with the prospect of paying more income tax and will vote out anyone who doesn't pledge not to raise it. The numbers don't add up and we won't vote for anyone who will even try to make them, so this is what we get.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
If there was an industry ripe for being turned upside-down by technology, it would be undergraduate degrees.
Instead, we have a system of institutional and regulatory capture, selling scarcity by the admissions process, for teenagers to spend three years racking up debt that can’t even be dismissed by bankruptcy despite usurious interest rates.
My harsh (to universities and staff) solution is to allow anyone to sit university exams at cost plus reasonable margin, whether they have studied there or not.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.
New taxes are being added to lots of industries over the last few years - banks, energy, betting, private schools to name just a few - because the public cannot cope with the prospect of paying more income tax and will vote out anyone who doesn't pledge not to raise it. The numbers don't add up and we won't vote for anyone who will even try to make them, so this is what we get.
And in several of those they are causing the risk of a major collapse as well. It's reckless to the point of stupidity.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.
New taxes are being added to lots of industries over the last few years - banks, energy, betting, private schools to name just a few - because the public cannot cope with the prospect of paying more income tax and will vote out anyone who doesn't pledge not to raise it. The numbers don't add up and we won't vote for anyone who will even try to make them, so this is what we get.
And in several of those they are causing the risk of a major collapse as well. It's reckless to the point of stupidity.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.
New taxes are being added to lots of industries over the last few years - banks, energy, betting, private schools to name just a few - because the public cannot cope with the prospect of paying more income tax and will vote out anyone who doesn't pledge not to raise it. The numbers don't add up and we won't vote for anyone who will even try to make them, so this is what we get.
And in several of those they are causing the risk of a major collapse as well. It's reckless to the point of stupidity.
It is the nations and electorates clear choice.
Also known as the Will Of The People.
That arithmetic cares not for the Will Of The People is a mere detail.
(The problem is that there isn't a unitary People with a single Will, there are lots of people who prioritise different things. Some people are perfectly happy to trash the national economy in the name of cultural concerns because they personally have enough, thank you very much.)
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
I agree with some of that. I would note that polling shows that the public don’t object to overseas students. The government’s own research has shown that very few overseas students overstay their visas.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
I agree with some of that. I would note that polling shows that the public don’t object to overseas students. The government’s own research has shown that very few overseas students overstay their visas.
They also don't object to hosting Ukrainian refugees, or Hong Kong refugees, or even care workers and nurses.
But clearly they object more to the whole ensemble than they favour each individual case.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
A big part of the bit I've highlighted is the rate at which the minimum wage has been jacked up. I've just taken on an engineering graduate at work. £13/hr.
I've not done the sums, but I think after April he'd have a larger take home pay if he was on the minimum wage without the student debt.
His degree will be basically useless to him at work. He needs to be able to write English decently, have an acceptable telephone manner, do straight forward maths, including being fairly good at triggernometry, and be able to use a tape measure accurately. I could do all that at the end of my A levels.
Universities should never have become dependent on foreign students for their income.
Well, there's plenty of blame to go round there too. Starting with the Browne review commissioned under El Gordo, moving through Gove's inept bungling, and carrying on to Massive and Suella not understanding the international student market.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I suggest that you check the facts.
After reaching a post war low in 1977 (1.7), the E&W fertility rate generally rose in the period to 2012 (1.9) although there are some variations in that period. The sharpest fluctuation in that period being a rise from 2001 (1.6) to 2008 (1.9) which coincides quite closely with the introduction of better support for low income families through the Working Families Tax Credit in 1999.
The precipitate drop in the fertility rate came in the period 2012 (1.9) to 2024 (1.4), which coincides with Osborne's austerity squeeze and from 2017 the introduction of the two child benefit cap. And happened in an era generally when the financial interests of pensioners have been prioritised over those of low income families.
Current fertility rate in Sweden (2024) is around 1.43, and it is a fairly socially liberal country. Not sure who their equivalent of Geo Osborne figure is, in any case this is an issue which is very widespread in a lot of western countries which are not hard-right economically
Highest fertility rates in the world are in Africa, as they are very religious still relative to the West even if poorer
They are dropping in Africa, albeit slower and starting from a higher figure than Europe. Think it has more to do with health care than religion. The late Hans Rosling was an expert on this
Average fertility rate in Africa is 4.0, nearly 3 times the rate here.
6/10 of the most religious nations in the world are in Africa, 7/10 of the least religious nations are in Europe. China is the least religious nation of all and their fertility rate is only 1
Yes but China had pretty much a 1 child policy for decades
I honestly think high fertility rate is more about health care (and availability of money) than religion. In the Victorian days, big families were very common as fewer kids would survive. We don't have the same issues now, health care and immunisation have improved survival rates drastically
Watch the YouTube link HYUFD, dont think Mr Rosling mentions religion at all
Well of course he doesn't as he was a physician not a priest but that doesn't mean it wasn't a factor.
If divorce was criminalised, full time work was banned for women of child bearing age and abortion was made illegal again and contraception was banned our fertility rate would rocket within a decade without any change in healthcare.
However of course none of that would happen as it would be unacceptable to most in modern liberal, secular societies
So you're calling for a return to good old Conservatism, then.
The Tories used to just make divorce so expensive that nobody could afford it, and banned contraception and abortion because the C of E (well, the Tories at Church) didn't like it, and so the women had to stay at home and look after the n babies.
That attitude lingered on well into living memory. Still does, so far as I can see [edit] in some quarters.
Not really, divorce was legalised here a century before Roman Catholic Ireland for example and abortion was legalised in the UK nearly half a century before the Irish legalised it too. The Vatican has also been far more anti contraception than the C of E has been.
Conservative Muslims in the UK would also be more sympathetic to restricting divorce and female full time careers than most liberal Anglicans would be
Calling divorce 'legalised' when you needed huge funds to implement it is a bit, erm, pleading the technicalities.
To illustrate the point, the Scots always had divorce on a much moee reasonable basis, marriage being a civil contract and no business of the churches though many thought it nice to be married by the minister (usually in the bride's mother's parlour or the minister's study). .
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
A big part of the bit I've highlighted is the rate at which the minimum wage has been jacked up. I've just taken on an engineering graduate at work. £13/hr.
I've not done the sums, but I think after April he'd have a larger take home pay if he was on the minimum wage without the student debt.
His degree will be basically useless to him at work. He needs to be able to write English decently, have an acceptable telephone manner, do straight forward maths, including being fairly good at triggernometry, and be able to use a tape measure accurately. I could do all that at the end of my A levels.
Most education that is useful for business is available for free here:
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
I agree with some of that. I would note that polling shows that the public don’t object to overseas students. The government’s own research has shown that very few overseas students overstay their visas.
The general principle is that the public don't like immigration in the abstract, but are much more open (in many cases, positively keen) on specific concrete examples.
I wonder how much Dave realised what he was doing with his "tens of thousands" soundbite? Both the contortions governments gone though to try to meet it, an the prominence of the total number as an undifferentiated mass?
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I suggest that you check the facts.
After reaching a post war low in 1977 (1.7), the E&W fertility rate generally rose in the period to 2012 (1.9) although there are some variations in that period. The sharpest fluctuation in that period being a rise from 2001 (1.6) to 2008 (1.9) which coincides quite closely with the introduction of better support for low income families through the Working Families Tax Credit in 1999.
The precipitate drop in the fertility rate came in the period 2012 (1.9) to 2024 (1.4), which coincides with Osborne's austerity squeeze and from 2017 the introduction of the two child benefit cap. And happened in an era generally when the financial interests of pensioners have been prioritised over those of low income families.
Current fertility rate in Sweden (2024) is around 1.43, and it is a fairly socially liberal country. Not sure who their equivalent of Geo Osborne figure is, in any case this is an issue which is very widespread in a lot of western countries which are not hard-right economically
Highest fertility rates in the world are in Africa, as they are very religious still relative to the West even if poorer
They are dropping in Africa, albeit slower and starting from a higher figure than Europe. Think it has more to do with health care than religion. The late Hans Rosling was an expert on this
Average fertility rate in Africa is 4.0, nearly 3 times the rate here.
6/10 of the most religious nations in the world are in Africa, 7/10 of the least religious nations are in Europe. China is the least religious nation of all and their fertility rate is only 1
Yes but China had pretty much a 1 child policy for decades
I honestly think high fertility rate is more about health care (and availability of money) than religion. In the Victorian days, big families were very common as fewer kids would survive. We don't have the same issues now, health care and immunisation have improved survival rates drastically
Watch the YouTube link HYUFD, dont think Mr Rosling mentions religion at all
Well of course he doesn't as he was a physician not a priest but that doesn't mean it wasn't a factor.
If divorce was criminalised, full time work was banned for women of child bearing age and abortion was made illegal again and contraception was banned our fertility rate would rocket within a decade without any change in healthcare.
However of course none of that would happen as it would be unacceptable to most in modern liberal, secular societies
So you're calling for a return to good old Conservatism, then.
The Tories used to just make divorce so expensive that nobody could afford it, and banned contraception and abortion because the C of E (well, the Tories at Church) didn't like it, and so the women had to stay at home and look after the n babies.
That attitude lingered on well into living memory. Still does, so far as I can see [edit] in some quarters.
Not really, divorce was legalised here a century before Roman Catholic Ireland for example and abortion was legalised in the UK nearly half a century before the Irish legalised it too. The Vatican has also been far more anti contraception than the C of E has been.
Conservative Muslims in the UK would also be more sympathetic to restricting divorce and female full time careers than most liberal Anglicans would be
Calling divorce 'legalised' when you needed huge funds to implement it is a bit, erm, pleading the technicalities.
To illustrate the point, the Scots always had divorce on a much moee reasonable basis, marriage being a civil contract and no business of the churches though many thought it nice to be married by the minister (usually in the bride's mother's parlour or the minister's study). .
Or indeed the blacksmith's forge at Gretna Green...
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.
Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc
Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*
GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.
*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.
Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.
The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.
You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.
With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.
That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.
I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.
That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.
I suggest that you check the facts.
After reaching a post war low in 1977 (1.7), the E&W fertility rate generally rose in the period to 2012 (1.9) although there are some variations in that period. The sharpest fluctuation in that period being a rise from 2001 (1.6) to 2008 (1.9) which coincides quite closely with the introduction of better support for low income families through the Working Families Tax Credit in 1999.
The precipitate drop in the fertility rate came in the period 2012 (1.9) to 2024 (1.4), which coincides with Osborne's austerity squeeze and from 2017 the introduction of the two child benefit cap. And happened in an era generally when the financial interests of pensioners have been prioritised over those of low income families.
Current fertility rate in Sweden (2024) is around 1.43, and it is a fairly socially liberal country. Not sure who their equivalent of Geo Osborne figure is, in any case this is an issue which is very widespread in a lot of western countries which are not hard-right economically
Highest fertility rates in the world are in Africa, as they are very religious still relative to the West even if poorer
They are dropping in Africa, albeit slower and starting from a higher figure than Europe. Think it has more to do with health care than religion. The late Hans Rosling was an expert on this
Average fertility rate in Africa is 4.0, nearly 3 times the rate here.
6/10 of the most religious nations in the world are in Africa, 7/10 of the least religious nations are in Europe. China is the least religious nation of all and their fertility rate is only 1
Yes but China had pretty much a 1 child policy for decades
I honestly think high fertility rate is more about health care (and availability of money) than religion. In the Victorian days, big families were very common as fewer kids would survive. We don't have the same issues now, health care and immunisation have improved survival rates drastically
Watch the YouTube link HYUFD, dont think Mr Rosling mentions religion at all
Well of course he doesn't as he was a physician not a priest but that doesn't mean it wasn't a factor.
If divorce was criminalised, full time work was banned for women of child bearing age and abortion was made illegal again and contraception was banned our fertility rate would rocket within a decade without any change in healthcare.
However of course none of that would happen as it would be unacceptable to most in modern liberal, secular societies
So you're calling for a return to good old Conservatism, then.
The Tories used to just make divorce so expensive that nobody could afford it, and banned contraception and abortion because the C of E (well, the Tories at Church) didn't like it, and so the women had to stay at home and look after the n babies.
That attitude lingered on well into living memory. Still does, so far as I can see [edit] in some quarters.
Not really, divorce was legalised here a century before Roman Catholic Ireland for example and abortion was legalised in the UK nearly half a century before the Irish legalised it too. The Vatican has also been far more anti contraception than the C of E has been.
Conservative Muslims in the UK would also be more sympathetic to restricting divorce and female full time careers than most liberal Anglicans would be
Calling divorce 'legalised' when you needed huge funds to implement it is a bit, erm, pleading the technicalities.
To illustrate the point, the Scots always had divorce on a much moee reasonable basis, marriage being a civil contract and no business of the churches though many thought it nice to be married by the minister (usually in the bride's mother's parlour or the minister's study). .
Or indeed the blacksmith's forge at Gretna Green...
That was the C18 equivalent of deep fried Mars Bars - a tourist trap ...
But yes. The English elite - aristo and legal - got so panicked about their daughters heading off to Gretna, Lamberton, etc. that at one time the judges were beginning to actually disregard Scots law marriages as legally invalid in England. Which would have collapsed the Treaty of Union.
Though wiser counsels prevailed - and in the longer term Westminster increasingly anglicised the Scots legislation on marriage.
‘ ‼️ BREAKING ‼️ * England take the lead. * Stokes & Jacks rock solid. * Partnership now 58. * Australia looking worried. * NO NATHAN LYON. * Repeat: NO NATHAN LYON. This ain’t over. #Ashes
Universities should never have become dependent on foreign students for their income.
We have a trade deficit, a massive one in goods. In 2021/2 the height of the Boris wave, international students brought in £42bn to our economy and cost us £4.4bn - a net benefit of over £37bn which is how we can afford to buy the tat we want Amazon to deliver to our homes. Of course we should take advantage of this opportunity, we just can't for the moment whilst the public have immigration as policy issue number one (with some justification, parts of our systems don't work).
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
I agree with some of that. I would note that polling shows that the public don’t object to overseas students. The government’s own research has shown that very few overseas students overstay their visas.
And if some of these educated students choose to make a life and a career here using their education and skills all well and good.
The anniversary of a day which a great man once said "will live in infamy" and a day which contributed much to making the world we now know. Had Japan not attacked the US and Britain, who knows where we would be now?
Pleasantly surprised to awaken to the news the cricket is still going on but the denouement is merely postponed I suspect.
Looking at student numbers, I was always told Kingston University had around 18,000 students on the roll and that's still the case if you include Undergraduates and Postgraduates though with part timers the actual FTE student number is nearer 16,500.
Both my little nephews are at University, one at John Moores in Liverpool and the other at York doing Commercial Property - I've told him the two words he needs to remember are "pro bono" especially if his Uncle needs legal advice.
To show how much things have changed in politics, compare the current Find Out Now poll with the equivalent from 12 months ago:
As we've seen from local by-elections, the moves have been from Conservative and Labour to Reform and Green. The split between the Ref/Con and Lab/Green blocks is almost the same now as it was a year ago.
The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.
So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.
Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.
Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.
It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.
Which is where most Greens now come from.
The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.
Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.
I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.
Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…
Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.
They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.
I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.
Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard. Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.
Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.
I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.
But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.
Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.
Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.
I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.
Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.
The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.
I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.
If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.
Wrong
There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.
Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.
Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
In practice, yes.
In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.
Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.
That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.
“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”
Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
Should the government bale out University (Vice Chancellors) of their inability to run their operations within the financial straightjacket while paying themselves high salaries. If they want to f**k up an operation and pay themselves bonuses, they should have joined a utility like a water company.
Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.
I despise Vice Chancellors with all my heart, but the current financial situation is at least as much due to government policy as to their greed and ineptitude.
If you order them to take as many students as they can, including from overseas, and make them build accommodation to cope, then cut funding for domestic students, arbitrarily withdraw visa programmes because of drunken lies by some Fascist hack in the Daily Wail, then cut funding for research, then freeze domestic payments, then whack up taxes, you can't be surprised if the numbers end up not adding up.
Whilst I agree with this analysis, you come back to the issue of assessing risk. If you are essentially operating in a high risk area (subject to political whim) you have to hedge your bets which I assume most people here know how to. There should be some penalty for those not capable of assessing risk and mitigating it, but the mitigation appears to be to ask for more taxpayers money without penalty.
So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...
@148grss Good to see you back - more thoughtful voices from the left make this board much more valuable in my view.
I didn't have time to comment on your article at the time, though I agreed with much of it and still do.
My main sticking point with the Greens (having previously been a member) is their economic illiteracy. Much as I would like our country to shift back towards more social democratic policy and to unwind neoliberalism, too rarely do I hear voices on the left describing how to do this without getting caught in a debt/bailout trap that would strengthen the neoliberal ideologues by making us even more beholden to a broken financial market.
The New Economics Foundation are a rare sliver of light here - I would like to understand more about their views on how to modify Reeves' fiscal rules.
The anniversary of a day which a great man once said "will live in infamy" and a day which contributed much to making the world we now know. Had Japan not attacked the US and Britain, who knows where we would be now?
Pleasantly surprised to awaken to the news the cricket is still going on but the denouement is merely postponed I suspect.
Looking at student numbers, I was always told Kingston University had around 18,000 students on the roll and that's still the case if you include Undergraduates and Postgraduates though with part timers the actual FTE student number is nearer 16,500.
Both my little nephews are at University, one at John Moores in Liverpool and the other at York doing Commercial Property - I've told him the two words he needs to remember are "pro bono" especially if his Uncle needs legal advice.
To show how much things have changed in politics, compare the current Find Out Now poll with the equivalent from 12 months ago:
As we've seen from local by-elections, the moves have been from Conservative and Labour to Reform and Green. The split between the Ref/Con and Lab/Green blocks is almost the same now as it was a year ago.
On one hand, it points to the hunger for something, anything, different. On the other, there's plenty of reason to think that either version of different currently on offer is going to be worse.
Improving things within the constraints of reality isn't going to be easy. Partly because, in the grand scheme of things, here and now is pretty good for most people. Party because the way out involves most of us deliberately paying more tax. Partly because it means embracing the stuff we're good at, rather than holding on to a 1970s fantasy Britain.
But someone has to try. If they can generate enthusiasm, so much the better.
Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth
What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.
If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.
They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.
He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.
Spare us the insulting language, Casino.
It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.
You'll have to explain how 'Tedious Tactical Triangulator' is insulting, unless you are SKS himself.
You don't need to take political comments personally, unless you choose to do so.
You didn't used to be this sensitive or angry - I hope everything’s alright on your end.
So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...
@148grss Good to see you back - more thoughtful voices from the left make this board much more valuable in my view.
I didn't have time to comment on your article at the time, though I agreed with much of it and still do.
My main sticking point with the Greens (having previously been a member) is their economic illiteracy. Much as I would like our country to shift back towards more social democratic policy and to unwind neoliberalism, too rarely do I hear voices on the left describing how to do this without getting caught in a debt/bailout trap that would strengthen the neoliberal ideologues by making us even more beholden to a broken financial market.
The New Economics Foundation are a rare sliver of light here - I would like to understand more about their views on how to modify Reeves' fiscal rules.
Let's be honest - there's a lot of economic illiteracy to go round and it exists to some degree in all parties but perhaps nowhere more strongly than among the electorate who seem to support raising taxes as long as they don't have to pay them and higher spending as long as they are the beneficiaries.
It's also not surprising those who pander to this line (in all parties) are getting support and those who dare to offer a contrary view are getting a rough ride.
So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...
@148grss Good to see you back - more thoughtful voices from the left make this board much more valuable in my view.
I didn't have time to comment on your article at the time, though I agreed with much of it and still do.
My main sticking point with the Greens (having previously been a member) is their economic illiteracy. Much as I would like our country to shift back towards more social democratic policy and to unwind neoliberalism, too rarely do I hear voices on the left describing how to do this without getting caught in a debt/bailout trap that would strengthen the neoliberal ideologues by making us even more beholden to a broken financial market.
The New Economics Foundation are a rare sliver of light here - I would like to understand more about their views on how to modify Reeves' fiscal rules.
Let's be honest - there's a lot of economic illiteracy to go round and it exists to some degree in all parties but perhaps nowhere more strongly than among the electorate who seem to support raising taxes as long as they don't have to pay them and higher spending as long as they are the beneficiaries.
It's also not surprising those who pander to this line (in all parties) are getting support and those who dare to offer a contrary view are getting a rough ride.
Very good point.
Nevertheless economic illiteracy that sustains the house of cards that Thatcher and Reagan started seems to get a free pass, whereas that which would dismantle the increasingly rickety house of cards before it all collapses into dust gets relentless scrutiny.
Hence the Greens have a challenge of a different order to Reform.
Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth
What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.
If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.
They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.
He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.
Spare us the insulting language, Casino.
It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.
I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?
I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.
I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.
Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.
But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.
He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.
Comments
Boosting skills allows us to have a more talented, educated and skilled workforce that improves our economy. Bringing in people to do minimum wage, unskilled works just deflates our education it does not improve it.
Education, education, education is key.
People are individuals, with their own hopes and aims and desires. We are not all programmed to equally want marriage and kids. In modern life, there are more choices than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago. People are free to have other aspirations or goals.
Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.
https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/1997375690115563591
In Europe you can refer to Americans as pigs, but not convicted rapists
- extremely smooth acceleration and driving
- excellent lane control
- dealt with LA's lunatic drivers fine
- no worry if the driver if drunk, high or tired
- no need to make awkward conversation
- no worries about tipping
- half the price of an Uber (with an initial 30% discount)
Overall an excellent experience and I'm looking forward to them starting in London in the spring if the current government doesn't screw it up somehow.
Surely the Conservatives should be advocating freedom of choice, and the state shouldn't be dictating what individuals do with their lives?
We failed Gen Z on social media – we cannot fail them on AI, too
If we do not want a generation whose first instinct is to confide in a machine, we as adults need to regain young people’s trust" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/06/we-failed-gen-z-on-social-media-we-cannot-fail-them-on-ai/
I know some very intelligent people (moreso than me) who don't want kids. That's their choice. For others who don't have kids, they maybe can't. The wrong thing to do would be to judge or force them, everyone pays taxes which contribute to the education system, whether they have kids or not.
I don't think the reason the fertility rate has dropped below 1.5 is due to the lack of God in people's lives. Looking at my parents generation, a lot more women now have full time jobs than 40/50 years ago. I think that's a good thing
*minimum, more likely 70 or means tested
hoursminutes do we think England will last in todays play?But you probably do want an NHS account!
"Beware of extrapolation from small datasets"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c773vvmr5peo
TL/DR; Netflix will show The Rest is Football daily during the World Cup.
The other, related, background story is the rise of podcasts (where's Leon?) which have been lucrative for producers like Goalhanger, platforms, and presenters (even PBers!).
So did Netflix want Lineker as pundit or podcast entrepreneur? Goalhanger's The Rest Is... stable dominates the scene.
F1: just about to start writing the final pre-race ramble of the season. Not been a vintage year, going to probably finish slightly red. In my defence, I did have some rotten luck. Two bets failed by about half a second, another due to Norris' only reliability failure in 2-3 years, and a third was correct in terms of prediction but because McLaren got disqualified after the podium the bet counted as red.
Anyway, now that the excuses are done, I'll get to work.
In this brave new world of shattered traditional allegiances, Reform has led in every survey of opinion for more than six months. Labour and the Tories are knocking around 17 to 18 points. This degree of fragmentation is familiar to many countries with proportional representation. Brexit Britain has weirdly ended up with a more European kind of politics. Which wouldn’t be such a headache if we were not still saddled with a first-past-the-post voting system, which is less fit for purpose than ever.
Squint at the numbers a different way and you can see two big blocks. Who forms our next government could well depend on whether it is the right block or the left one which is the most splintered.
The idea of forming a ”popular front” with other parties of the left has traction among some Labour people. The appeal is that it would reduce the risk of a split on the left letting in the right. But it is near impossible to see how a bargain might be struck. [Similarly] Some Tories reckon their best hope of survival is to strike some kind of deal with Mr Farage to “unite the right”. Others fear that idea is an existential threat to the oldest of Britain’s parties. Reform reckons it will come out on top at next May’s elections to the Welsh Senedd, Scottish parliament and in English local government. A deal with the Conservatives would undercut Mr Farage’s claim to represent a clean break with the politics of the past.
The stage is being set for the next general election to be a high-stakes, high-wire, high-turnout affair in which the issue which most motivates voters is whether or not they want to see Mr Farage and his vulpine grin posing on the doorstep of Number 10. Labour strategists tell me this will suit them on the grounds that the spectre of a triumphant Farage will induce leftish voters to hold their noses and back Labour to stop it happening. It explains why Sir Keir is so keen to talk up Reform as his chief adversary and speaks of defeating them as a moral mission. But tactical voting can cut both ways. Reform strategists think they can squeeze Tory support behind their man by consolidating right-wing voters who loathe Labour.
For all the apparent fragmentation of British politics, there’s a good chance that the next general election will turn into an extremely binary affair with one central question on the ballot paper: how much does the thought of prime minister Farage terrify you?
It seems to say the least highly improbable that they will be the largest party in Scotland. Even coming second would be pretty seismic.
Betting PostF1: as a special festive punishment, here's the final pre-race ramble of 2025:
https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/12/abu-dhabi-2025-pre-qualifying_7.html
I've backed Piastri each way at 8.5 and Bearman to beat Hamilton at 1.62. Bearman has looked faster all weekend and starts with a 5 place advantage. Piastri's been looking much more competitive lately, and I think he's got a solid chance (more than the market believes) to be top 2 or even claim the win.
(I don’t have a ticket yet though, will be trying to find someone with a spare, or I might end up in the hotel sports bar across the road watching on TV.)
I was just running through the numbers and it seems Piastri (title) is still my best result, but Verstappen and Norris aren't too far behind. Still irked at myself for nervously hedging it too early, but green whoever gets that.
Or, England’s Jacks off.
All the woke do gooders pretend it is a great thing.
It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.
Which may be the case, of course.
Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.
The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.
More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.
Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.
If you order them to take as many students as they can, including from overseas, and make them build accommodation to cope, then cut funding for domestic students, arbitrarily withdraw visa programmes because of drunken lies by some Fascist hack in the Daily Wail, then cut funding for research, then freeze domestic payments, then whack up taxes, you can't be surprised if the numbers end up not adding up.
Instead, we have a system of institutional and regulatory capture, selling scarcity by the admissions process, for teenagers to spend three years racking up debt that can’t even be dismissed by bankruptcy despite usurious interest rates.
Sums up this display.
That arithmetic cares not for the Will Of The People is a mere detail.
(The problem is that there isn't a unitary People with a single Will, there are lots of people who prioritise different things. Some people are perfectly happy to trash the national economy in the name of cultural concerns because they personally have enough, thank you very much.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/cy9n0j2vw3rt#Scorecard
Anyway, to cheer everyone up, here is a clip from Not Only But Also in 1965.
Starring not only Dudley Moore and Peter Cook but also a certain Peter Sellers...
https://youtu.be/bQsoCjJfPcU?si=FzNPWHdfl6mY05tv
But clearly they object more to the whole ensemble than they favour each individual case.
I've not done the sums, but I think after April he'd have a larger take home pay if he was on the minimum wage without the student debt.
His degree will be basically useless to him at work. He needs to be able to write English decently, have an acceptable telephone manner, do straight forward maths, including being fairly good at triggernometry, and be able to use a tape measure accurately. I could do all that at the end of my A levels.
To illustrate the point, the Scots always had divorce on a much moee reasonable basis, marriage being a civil contract and no business of the churches though many thought it nice to be married by the minister (usually in the bride's mother's parlour or the minister's study). .
https://www.edx.org/
Exams at low fees. Backed by MIT, Harvard, Cambridge and others.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/
I wonder how much Dave realised what he was doing with his "tens of thousands" soundbite? Both the contortions governments gone though to try to meet it, an the prominence of the total number as an undifferentiated mass?
It's bad for any organisation to be dependent on one source of income, but I don't see any future government making universities a spending priority.
But yes. The English elite - aristo and legal - got so panicked about their daughters heading off to Gretna, Lamberton, etc. that at one time the judges were beginning to actually disregard Scots law marriages as legally invalid in England. Which would have collapsed the Treaty of Union.
Though wiser counsels prevailed - and in the longer term Westminster increasingly anglicised the Scots legislation on marriage.
‘ ‼️ BREAKING ‼️
* England take the lead.
* Stokes & Jacks rock solid.
* Partnership now 58.
* Australia looking worried.
* NO NATHAN LYON.
* Repeat: NO NATHAN LYON.
This ain’t over. #Ashes
https://x.com/piersmorgan/status/1997544442719531256?s=61
The anniversary of a day which a great man once said "will live in infamy" and a day which contributed much to making the world we now know. Had Japan not attacked the US and Britain, who knows where we would be now?
Pleasantly surprised to awaken to the news the cricket is still going on but the denouement is merely postponed I suspect.
Looking at student numbers, I was always told Kingston University had around 18,000 students on the roll and that's still the case if you include Undergraduates and Postgraduates though with part timers the actual FTE student number is nearer 16,500.
Both my little nephews are at University, one at John Moores in Liverpool and the other at York doing Commercial Property - I've told him the two words he needs to remember are "pro bono" especially if his Uncle needs legal advice.
To show how much things have changed in politics, compare the current Find Out Now poll with the equivalent from 12 months ago:
Reform: 31% (+7)
Conservatives: 20% (-6)
Greens: 18% (+9)
Labour: 14% (-9)
Liberal Democrats: 11% (nc)
As we've seen from local by-elections, the moves have been from Conservative and Labour to Reform and Green. The split between the Ref/Con and Lab/Green blocks is almost the same now as it was a year ago.
I didn't have time to comment on your article at the time, though I agreed with much of it and still do.
My main sticking point with the Greens (having previously been a member) is their economic illiteracy. Much as I would like our country to shift back towards more social democratic policy and to unwind neoliberalism, too rarely do I hear voices on the left describing how to do this without getting caught in a debt/bailout trap that would strengthen the neoliberal ideologues by making us even more beholden to a broken financial market.
The New Economics Foundation are a rare sliver of light here - I would like to understand more about their views on how to modify Reeves' fiscal rules.
Improving things within the constraints of reality isn't going to be easy. Partly because, in the grand scheme of things, here and now is pretty good for most people. Party because the way out involves most of us deliberately paying more tax. Partly because it means embracing the stuff we're good at, rather than holding on to a 1970s fantasy Britain.
But someone has to try. If they can generate enthusiasm, so much the better.
You don't need to take political comments personally, unless you choose to do so.
You didn't used to be this sensitive or angry - I hope everything’s alright on your end.
It's also not surprising those who pander to this line (in all parties) are getting support and those who dare to offer a contrary view are getting a rough ride.
Nevertheless economic illiteracy that sustains the house of cards that Thatcher and Reagan started seems to get a free pass, whereas that which would dismantle the increasingly rickety house of cards before it all collapses into dust gets relentless scrutiny.
Hence the Greens have a challenge of a different order to Reform.
https://tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/#elizabeth
NEW THREAD
But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.
He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.