Stop voting for fucking Tories

[dpedin]

Another Cabinet of None of The Talents.

A strong whiff of rearranging the deckchairs as the Tory Titanic slowly sinks below the waves. They really are bereft of any serious politicians or thinkers now they have been overrun by the batshit right wing crazies and post the Blonde Bumbelcunt purge of experienced old hands. With Badenoch in charge I suspect they might drift off into the right wing culture war distance now before tying themselves forlornly to the leaky Farage lifeboat.

[SaintK]

Easy now. As she said, shadow ministerial appointments of all the talents.

Mark Francois is the Shadow Minister of State for Defence

[sturginho]

Thanks for reminding me that François is still an MP....

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Easy now. As she said, shadow ministerial appointments of all the talents.

Mark Francois is the Shadow Minister of State for Defence

That can't be true can it? You just wouldn't, it's like Therese Coffey without the wit and charm

[dpedin]

Easy now. As she said, shadow ministerial appointments of all the talents.

Mark Francois is the Shadow Minister of State for Defence

That can't be true can it? You just wouldn't, it's like Therese Coffey without the wit and charm

He will need a box to stand on for all those speeches!

[inactionman]

On a related note, Badenoch is due to give evidence to the Horizon enquiry on 6th November.

She was Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade for a year or so during the time that compensation should have been looked at - when she was very busy instructing then PO Chair Staunton to drag his feet until after the election and then firing him anyway via sky news.

Seeing as she is never wrong, never apologises and never makes a mistake, I'll be interested to hear what the KCs make of her.

Oh Good God. She's up in front of the inquiry and doing about as well as expected.

Badenoch says being seen to do right thing 'just as important' in politics as doing right thing

......When Beer put it to Badenoch that doing the right thing was more important than being seen to do the right thing, Badenoch claimed that was not the case in politics.She said:

Both of them are important – doing the right thing when no one knows that you’re doing it often creates different problems elsewhere.

So, as a politician, it is not enough to do the right thing. It’s also important to be seen to be doing the right thing.

[petej]

On a related note, Badenoch is due to give evidence to the Horizon enquiry on 6th November.

She was Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade for a year or so during the time that compensation should have been looked at - when she was very busy instructing then PO Chair Staunton to drag his feet until after the election and then firing him anyway via sky news.

Seeing as she is never wrong, never apologises and never makes a mistake, I'll be interested to hear what the KCs make of her.

Oh Good God. She's up in front of the inquiry and doing about as well as expected.

Badenoch says being seen to do right thing 'just as important' in politics as doing right thing

......When Beer put it to Badenoch that doing the right thing was more important than being seen to do the right thing, Badenoch claimed that was not the case in politics.She said:

Both of them are important – doing the right thing when no one knows that you’re doing it often creates different problems elsewhere.

So, as a politician, it is not enough to do the right thing. It’s also important to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Going to feel dirty saying this because I wish this wasn't so. Badenoch is 100% correct that if no one knows your doing the right thing in an organisation no one cares and you can easily be overlooked and disregarded. Problems being that others will try to fix a problem that no longer exists or claim credit for your work.

[inactionman]

On a related note, Badenoch is due to give evidence to the Horizon enquiry on 6th November.

She was Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade for a year or so during the time that compensation should have been looked at - when she was very busy instructing then PO Chair Staunton to drag his feet until after the election and then firing him anyway via sky news.

Seeing as she is never wrong, never apologises and never makes a mistake, I'll be interested to hear what the KCs make of her.

Oh Good God. She's up in front of the inquiry and doing about as well as expected.

Badenoch says being seen to do right thing 'just as important' in politics as doing right thing

......When Beer put it to Badenoch that doing the right thing was more important than being seen to do the right thing, Badenoch claimed that was not the case in politics.She said:

Both of them are important – doing the right thing when no one knows that you’re doing it often creates different problems elsewhere.

So, as a politician, it is not enough to do the right thing. It’s also important to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Going to feel dirty saying this because I wish this wasn't so. Badenoch is 100% correct that if no one knows your doing the right thing in an organisation no one cares and you can easily be overlooked and disregarded. Problems being that others will try to fix a problem that no longer exists or claim credit for your work.

My slightly cynical reading is that what she really means is 'only do the right thing if people are going to see what you do'.

[Biffer]

On a related note, Badenoch is due to give evidence to the Horizon enquiry on 6th November.

She was Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade for a year or so during the time that compensation should have been looked at - when she was very busy instructing then PO Chair Staunton to drag his feet until after the election and then firing him anyway via sky news.

Seeing as she is never wrong, never apologises and never makes a mistake, I'll be interested to hear what the KCs make of her.

Oh Good God. She's up in front of the inquiry and doing about as well as expected.

Badenoch says being seen to do right thing 'just as important' in politics as doing right thing

......When Beer put it to Badenoch that doing the right thing was more important than being seen to do the right thing, Badenoch claimed that was not the case in politics.She said:

Both of them are important – doing the right thing when no one knows that you’re doing it often creates different problems elsewhere.

So, as a politician, it is not enough to do the right thing. It’s also important to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Going to feel dirty saying this because I wish this wasn't so. Badenoch is 100% correct that if no one knows your doing the right thing in an organisation no one cares and you can easily be overlooked and disregarded. Problems being that others will try to fix a problem that no longer exists or claim credit for your work.

That’s not a reason not to do the right thing though.

You should do the right thing because it’s right, not because you get a reward for it.

[SaintK]

Fuck me, she can't possibly be that thick?

[epwc]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... iable-data

[sockwithaticket]

Fuck me, she can't possibly be that thick?

Cynically playing to the gallery most likely. Politicians like her thrive on confected rage, it's potentially sewing a seed for 5 years down the track.

"Remember when Labour wouldn't let you have a do over of the election?" It doesn't matter that there's no reality to the prospect of a rerun a mere 4 months later, it's all grist to the grievance mill and starts banking the idea of Labour denying them things. Even if those things are 100% figments of their own imagination, we live in the post-truth world now.

[SaintK]

It was me what did it


No it was me!

[epwc]

Heroes, total respect for both of them

[Sandstorm]

Heroes, total respect for both of them

[Simian]

Is it not only a drop because the previous year’s figures were revised up by ~20% tho? And the most recent year’s figures are also just provisional (ie could still be revised up too).

[Paddington Bear]

Is it not only a drop because the previous year’s figures were revised up by ~20% tho? And the most recent year’s figures are also just provisional (ie could still be revised up too).

Yes, nearly 1 million net the year before? Can anyone even pretend that these numbers are sustainable? How can you ever build infrastructure and housing to support this?

[tc27]

That's a shocking number and completely socially and economically insubstantable.

What on earth where our political leaders thinking? There is no consent for this level of immigration.

[epwc]

That's a shocking number and completely socially and economically insubstantable.

What on earth where our political leaders thinking? There is no consent for this level of immigration.

Yet they still campaigned on migration.

It's almost like facts don't matter

[Paddington Bear]

That's a shocking number and completely socially and economically insubstantable.

What on earth where our political leaders thinking? There is no consent for this level of immigration.

I cannot fathom the thought processes that led us here. Leaving aside so many issues, it is just clear across services and things that so much isn’t working properly in this country because there’s too many people accessing to scarce resources, you can’t wish that problem away.

We’re staring down the barrel of a Reform majority if something isn’t done, you’d hope Trump has acted as a warning but we shall see.

[sockwithaticket]

That's a shocking number and completely socially and economically insubstantable.

What on earth where our political leaders thinking? There is no consent for this level of immigration.

I cannot fathom the thought processes that led us here. Leaving aside so many issues, it is just clear across services and things that so much isn’t working properly in this country because there’s too many people accessing to scarce resources, you can’t wish that problem away.

We’re staring down the barrel of a Reform majority if something isn’t done, you’d hope Trump has acted as a warning but we shall see.

The people who donate and wield economic power like having endless waves of additional workers, it frees them up to suppress wages and avoid having to invest in domestic workers.

[tc27]

Politicians don't have answers to difficult ageing population and labour supply problems so opening the border to foreign labour is a salve. The problem is they get old and bring dependants and it just snowballs the problem.

[petej]

Politicians don't have answers to difficult ageing population and labour supply problems so opening the border to foreign labour is a salve. The problem is they get old and bring dependants and it just snowballs the problem.

This.

That's a shocking number and completely socially and economically insubstantable.

What on earth where our political leaders thinking? There is no consent for this level of immigration.

I cannot fathom the thought processes that led us here. Leaving aside so many issues, it is just clear across services and things that so much isn’t working properly in this country because there’s too many people accessing to scarce resources, you can’t wish that problem away.

We’re staring down the barrel of a Reform majority if something isn’t done, you’d hope Trump has acted as a warning but we shall see.

The people who donate and wield economic power like having endless waves of additional workers, it frees them up to suppress wages and avoid having to invest in domestic workers.

And this.

The mentality of endless growth is a huge issue once we go into declining populations and a change in demographics globally. The model and structures start to fall over. There will probably be a need to simplify many of the structures.

[tc27]

Just read only 16% of non EU migrants were via work visas.

JFC.

[Paddington Bear]

Just read only 16% of non EU migrants were via work visas.

JFC.

It’s been hard not to notice the rapid demographic change, but when stuff like this finally gets laid out it still shocks me

[dpedin]

Politicians don't have answers to difficult ageing population and labour supply problems so opening the border to foreign labour is a salve. The problem is they get old and bring dependants and it just snowballs the problem.

This.

I cannot fathom the thought processes that led us here. Leaving aside so many issues, it is just clear across services and things that so much isn’t working properly in this country because there’s too many people accessing to scarce resources, you can’t wish that problem away.

We’re staring down the barrel of a Reform majority if something isn’t done, you’d hope Trump has acted as a warning but we shall see.

The people who donate and wield economic power like having endless waves of additional workers, it frees them up to suppress wages and avoid having to invest in domestic workers.

And this.

The mentality of endless growth is a huge issue once we go into declining populations and a change in demographics globally. The model and structures start to fall over. There will probably be a need to simplify many of the structures.

Agreed - Remember the context of the fertility rate in England and Wales of 1.65 and in Scotland it is even lower at 1.3! To sustain a UK population then the fertility rate needs to be at 2.1 babies per fertile woman so we are about 20-35% below where we need to be. So with lower birth rates and an increase in 65+ years olds from 1in5 to 1in4 over the next 30+ years then the only way we will sustain a working age population that we need to survive is by immigration. The debate isnt about stopping immigration but rather how do we ensure we get the working population we need, and can afford, in order to sustain our economy. Shutting the doors of UK is just plain economic suicide and denies the demographic facts already in place.

Alternatively we can develop a range of policies/measures to encourage folk to have more babies - affordable housing, better employment rights, higher wages, access to affordable childcare, cheaper and more accessible public transport, etc, get more young folk to work in dead end jobs paying below a proper living wage whilst encouraging older folk to continue working to 67 whilst waiting for their hospital appointments for their arthritis/joint replacements, diabetes, COPD and chronic heart disease. All of this is just too difficult for Governments to tackle seriously so ongoing immigration it is then!

The reality is that it is easier for Governments to ignore the figures and just wang on about immigration being bad whilst opening the back door to even higher levels of immigration. Brexit and getting rid of FoM has been a shotgun to both feet and has merely accelerated the immigration 'crisis'. Farage and his racist buddies are now foaming at the mouth as it was bad enough with the Germans, Polish, Ukrainian and French coming here to live and 'taking our jobs' but post Brexit they've been replaced with immigrants from India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China! Expect more riots once the warm weather arrives next year.

[sockwithaticket]

Just read only 16% of non EU migrants were via work visas.

JFC.

I'm on the side of the left that's fairly hostile to freedom of movement since employers having access to a continent's worth of people as a potential labour pool has negative impacts on wages, but EU workers did tend to come in ones or twos rather than bring a whole bunch of dependents.

[epwc]

Expect more riots once the warm weather arrives next year.

Finally something to look forward to

[dpedin]

Just read only 16% of non EU migrants were via work visas.

JFC.

I'm on the side of the left that's fairly hostile to freedom of movement since employers having access to a continent's worth of people as a potential labour pool has negative impacts on wages, but EU workers did tend to come in ones or twos rather than bring a whole bunch of dependents.

But along with FoM came all the EU employment legislation etc which provided a wide range of protections. Now we have an immigration policy that has led to huge increases in immigration but are free of 'interference' from the EU and their pesky requirements. Fortunately Labour are looking to align us more closely with the EU, however there will be challenges to this from the right.

The EU workers tended to be young, well qualified, contributed more to the economy than they took out and went home to EU after a few years than most other immigrants to the UK. Seasonal workers were often exploited but that was by poor suffering farmers trying to save up for their IHT bills no doubt?

[C T]

Politicians don't have answers to difficult ageing population and labour supply problems so opening the border to foreign labour is a salve. The problem is they get old and bring dependants and it just snowballs the problem.

This.

The people who donate and wield economic power like having endless waves of additional workers, it frees them up to suppress wages and avoid having to invest in domestic workers.

And this.

The mentality of endless growth is a huge issue once we go into declining populations and a change in demographics globally. The model and structures start to fall over. There will probably be a need to simplify many of the structures.

Agreed - Remember the context of the fertility rate in England and Wales of 1.65 and in Scotland it is even lower at 1.3! To sustain a UK population then the fertility rate needs to be at 2.1 babies per fertile woman so we are about 20-35% below where we need to be. So with lower birth rates and an increase in 65+ years olds from 1in5 to 1in4 over the next 30+ years then the only way we will sustain a working age population that we need to survive is by immigration. The debate isnt about stopping immigration but rather how do we ensure we get the working population we need, and can afford, in order to sustain our economy. Shutting the doors of UK is just plain economic suicide and denies the demographic facts already in place.

Alternatively we can develop a range of policies/measures to encourage folk to have more babies - affordable housing, better employment rights, higher wages, access to affordable childcare, cheaper and more accessible public transport, etc, get more young folk to work in dead end jobs paying below a proper living wage whilst encouraging older folk to continue working to 67 whilst waiting for their hospital appointments for their arthritis/joint replacements, diabetes, COPD and chronic heart disease. All of this is just too difficult for Governments to tackle seriously so ongoing immigration it is then!

The reality is that it is easier for Governments to ignore the figures and just wang on about immigration being bad whilst opening the back door to even higher levels of immigration. Brexit and getting rid of FoM has been a shotgun to both feet and has merely accelerated the immigration 'crisis'. Farage and his racist buddies are now foaming at the mouth as it was bad enough with the Germans, Polish, Ukrainian and French coming here to live and 'taking our jobs' but post Brexit they've been replaced with immigrants from India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China! Expect more riots once the warm weather arrives next year.

Well I mean yes, sure. But as an alternative what we could do is come up with a ridiculous policy, that is also very expensive and will of course never work.

Since the Tories seem to want to be GoP lite these days, I'm volunteering "Shoot The Boats". Three words, one syllable each, that's how this all works right?

[Hal Jordan]

The answer to a falling population is to make having kids as affordable as possible.

But that would take an absolutely enormous rebalancing of how the economy works and how we view things. And that ain't happening.

[tc27]

The more I think about the more obnoxious this was.

At least Johnson had a mandate for Brexit. Giving a million none European immigrants visas was just going totally rogue.

[tabascoboy]

[Paddington Bear]

The answer to a falling population is to make having kids as affordable as possible.

But that would take an absolutely enormous rebalancing of how the economy works and how we view things. And that ain't happening.

Britain was within the margin of error of a replacement birthrate as late as 2008, it isn’t beyond the wit of man to bring it back. Housing is the key, and pumping up the demand for it massively is making it harder to bring back.

[Slick]

Just read only 16% of non EU migrants were via work visas.

JFC.

It’s been hard not to notice the rapid demographic change, but when stuff like this finally gets laid out it still shocks me

I’ve been in London all week and although it sounds strange even saying it, I even noticed the difference there. The number of Uber drivers was insane - as was their driving - and the roads around central London were the worst for congestion I have seen in many years

[epwc]

Slick I can’t remember ever being in an uber driven by a “white British” driver, anywhere in the country

[Biffer]

Politicians don't have answers to difficult ageing population and labour supply problems so opening the border to foreign labour is a salve. The problem is they get old and bring dependants and it just snowballs the problem.

This.

The people who donate and wield economic power like having endless waves of additional workers, it frees them up to suppress wages and avoid having to invest in domestic workers.

And this.

The mentality of endless growth is a huge issue once we go into declining populations and a change in demographics globally. The model and structures start to fall over. There will probably be a need to simplify many of the structures.

Agreed - Remember the context of the fertility rate in England and Wales of 1.65 and in Scotland it is even lower at 1.3! To sustain a UK population then the fertility rate needs to be at 2.1 babies per fertile woman so we are about 20-35% below where we need to be. So with lower birth rates and an increase in 65+ years olds from 1in5 to 1in4 over the next 30+ years then the only way we will sustain a working age population that we need to survive is by immigration. The debate isnt about stopping immigration but rather how do we ensure we get the working population we need, and can afford, in order to sustain our economy. Shutting the doors of UK is just plain economic suicide and denies the demographic facts already in place.

Alternatively we can develop a range of policies/measures to encourage folk to have more babies - affordable housing, better employment rights, higher wages, access to affordable childcare, cheaper and more accessible public transport, etc, get more young folk to work in dead end jobs paying below a proper living wage whilst encouraging older folk to continue working to 67 whilst waiting for their hospital appointments for their arthritis/joint replacements, diabetes, COPD and chronic heart disease. All of this is just too difficult for Governments to tackle seriously so ongoing immigration it is then!

The reality is that it is easier for Governments to ignore the figures and just wang on about immigration being bad whilst opening the back door to even higher levels of immigration. Brexit and getting rid of FoM has been a shotgun to both feet and has merely accelerated the immigration 'crisis'. Farage and his racist buddies are now foaming at the mouth as it was bad enough with the Germans, Polish, Ukrainian and French coming here to live and 'taking our jobs' but post Brexit they've been replaced with immigrants from India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China! Expect more riots once the warm weather arrives next year.

Can you point to any country, anywhere that has managed to increase its birth rate significantly through policy measures?

[Slick]

Slick I can’t remember ever being in an uber driven by a “white British” driver, anywhere in the country

Plenty in Scotland. But that’s not the point I was making. Zero issue with immigrants getting a job! It just seemed to me that the numbers had increased massively

[Slick]

This.



And this.

The mentality of endless growth is a huge issue once we go into declining populations and a change in demographics globally. The model and structures start to fall over. There will probably be a need to simplify many of the structures.

Agreed - Remember the context of the fertility rate in England and Wales of 1.65 and in Scotland it is even lower at 1.3! To sustain a UK population then the fertility rate needs to be at 2.1 babies per fertile woman so we are about 20-35% below where we need to be. So with lower birth rates and an increase in 65+ years olds from 1in5 to 1in4 over the next 30+ years then the only way we will sustain a working age population that we need to survive is by immigration. The debate isnt about stopping immigration but rather how do we ensure we get the working population we need, and can afford, in order to sustain our economy. Shutting the doors of UK is just plain economic suicide and denies the demographic facts already in place.

Alternatively we can develop a range of policies/measures to encourage folk to have more babies - affordable housing, better employment rights, higher wages, access to affordable childcare, cheaper and more accessible public transport, etc, get more young folk to work in dead end jobs paying below a proper living wage whilst encouraging older folk to continue working to 67 whilst waiting for their hospital appointments for their arthritis/joint replacements, diabetes, COPD and chronic heart disease. All of this is just too difficult for Governments to tackle seriously so ongoing immigration it is then!

The reality is that it is easier for Governments to ignore the figures and just wang on about immigration being bad whilst opening the back door to even higher levels of immigration. Brexit and getting rid of FoM has been a shotgun to both feet and has merely accelerated the immigration 'crisis'. Farage and his racist buddies are now foaming at the mouth as it was bad enough with the Germans, Polish, Ukrainian and French coming here to live and 'taking our jobs' but post Brexit they've been replaced with immigrants from India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China! Expect more riots once the warm weather arrives next year.

Can you point to any country, anywhere that has managed to increase its birth rate significantly through policy measures?

I don’t know the answer to this, but surely policy decisions can be made to get people already here, immigrants or not, to take the jobs that constantly seem to be needed to be filled by more immigrants

[epwc]

I don’t know the answer to this, but surely policy decisions can be made to get people already here, immigrants or not, to take the jobs that constantly seem to be needed to be filled by more immigrants

Not possible. Just before the Brexit vote I had an argument with my wife’s cousin, 2 kids in their mid twenties with degrees both sat on their arses doing nothing. He was voting leave cos migrants, I said if our kids were taking those jobs then we wouldn’t need migrants, to which of course he agreed. I then suggested his kids could get jobs as cleaners cos we’d never had white British cleaners at work (in 40 odd years) to which he obviously replied “why should they have to do that”

For the first half of the 20th century the clothing industry in the UK was kept alive by the Jews, for the second half it was Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Cypriots. By the 21st century pretty much no second/third generation migrants were working in clothing factories so a lot of the jobs were taken up by EU migrants.

Now the industry is more or less extinct.

The biggest issue here is the end of FOM, EU migrants were much more likely to go home afterwards. So right wing populists properly fucked themselves over, their followers will ensure that the same thing keeps happening.

The kind of policies that some of you are talking about are generational if not multi generational, that does not align with 4-5yearly cycles in a system where politicians working together across party seems to mean shouting at each other.