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.
I don't because so many of them appear to have an attitude problem and don't want to take you where you want to go.
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...
"Starmer is not personally popular, his policies are not popular, but left wing policies are. Voters for the Conservatives or Reform UK are never going to be persuaded to vote Labour – so if they are the only voters Labour panders to they will alienate more of their left wing and parties like the Greens will grow."
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.
Question here is whether this is even possible. That would imply diverting resources from immediate performance. And unis which didn't perform Right! Now! were being penalised ... IANAE but that's certainly how it seemed to me: for instance, and this is somethiong that adds to Ydoethur's thrust, the unis have to keep research outputs above average for the sector in the ferocious periodic external assessments, or be penalised ...
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.
Yes, but trying to quantify "something different" is the problem. As you say, for many people, it's not too bad currently and there's a fear radical change won't work to their advantage but for a significant minority the country is either not what it was nor what they think it could and should be and whether that's down to the "migrants" or something else will vary from person to person.
The problem with getting people to agree to pay more tax is they don't believe they will get any better services for the extra funding - if there was a perception paying more money would lead to better services, it would be an easier case to argue but the line is often the State is an inefficient bottomless pit and private companies are often the beneficiaries rather than public services.
We need a State model where extra funding will mean better services - Mehmood Mirza, for example, believes if he can get 4 extra Police on patrol in East Ham High Street it will stop the chronic levels of shoplifting. I think if you had a permanent BTP and revenue control presence at East Ham tube station, you'd reduce the chronic levels of fare evasion.
We might both be right but the investment in time and people and money to make the case just isn't happening under the current financial pressures and regimen so the levels of crime and evasion go unchecked and the law abiding get more resentful the lawless are being allowed to carry on without any real fear of being apprehended.
I should add it's my experience the shoplifters in East Ham often have mental health or addiction problems while the fare evaders are usually young men of all races and creeds who would rather spend their hard earned on phones and clothes than fares.
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). .
Roman Catholic Scots didn't, for them divorce is outright forbidden by the Vatican even now unless an annulment which is very difficult to 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.
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). .
Roman Catholic Scots didn't, for them divorce is outright forbidden by the Vatican even now unless an annulment which is very difficult to get
Nothing to do with the law in Scotland, which is the whole point. In England it was.
Comments
This old man, World War One
He played knickknack at Verdun
Cognac, Armagnac, Burgundy and Beaune,
This old man came rolling home.
This old man, World War Two,
He told Churchill what to do,
Free French General, Crosses of Lorraine.
He came rolling home again.
This old man, he played trois,
Vive la France, la France c’est moi.
Gimcrack governments, call me if you please,
Columbey-les-deux-Eglises.
This old man, he played four,
Choose de Gaulle or civil war!
Come back president, govern by decree,
Referendum, oui, oui, oui!
This old man, he played five,
France is safe, I’m still alive!
Plastique Pompidou, sing the Marseillaise
Algerie n'est pas francaise!
This old man, he played six,
France and England, they don't mix.
Eyetie*, Benelux, Germany and me,
That's my market recipe.
This old man, sept et huit,
NATO give me back my fleet!
Mwah, Mwah, Adenhauer, ratified in Bonn,
One old man goes on and on.
This old man, nine and ten,
He'll play Nick till God knows when.
Cognac, Armangnac, Burgundy and Beaune
This old man thinks he’s Saint Joan!
NEW THREAD
"Starmer is not personally popular, his policies are not popular, but left wing policies are. Voters for the Conservatives or Reform UK are never going to be persuaded to vote Labour – so if they are the only voters Labour panders to they will alienate more of their left wing and parties like the Greens will grow."
The problem with getting people to agree to pay more tax is they don't believe they will get any better services for the extra funding - if there was a perception paying more money would lead to better services, it would be an easier case to argue but the line is often the State is an inefficient bottomless pit and private companies are often the beneficiaries rather than public services.
We need a State model where extra funding will mean better services - Mehmood Mirza, for example, believes if he can get 4 extra Police on patrol in East Ham High Street it will stop the chronic levels of shoplifting. I think if you had a permanent BTP and revenue control presence at East Ham tube station, you'd reduce the chronic levels of fare evasion.
We might both be right but the investment in time and people and money to make the case just isn't happening under the current financial pressures and regimen so the levels of crime and evasion go unchecked and the law abiding get more resentful the lawless are being allowed to carry on without any real fear of being apprehended.
I should add it's my experience the shoplifters in East Ham often have mental health or addiction problems while the fare evaders are usually young men of all races and creeds who would rather spend their hard earned on phones and clothes than fares.