Politics

[bolty58]

I see that darling of the Europhiles on here, uber cunt Barmier has ignited uproar in France - that pillar of the EU which is facing financial crisis.

Forcing through a budget against the will of the majority of their parliament thereby shattering the alliance of disparate twats who banded together to (only just) foil Marine Le Pen last time around.

Another election likely. Suspect there'll be enough surrender monkeys pissed off enough to finally lurch to the right next time in keeping with the prevailing zeitgeist.

I've not forgotten Barmiers stirring of the Gibraltar and Northern Ireland situations during the Brexit success. Be good to see him fall even though he has feathered his nest opulently at the expense of dumbfuck EU contributors.

[Tonge moor green jacket]

Following on from the collapse of the government in Germany.

[tomski]

Whether you want to be part of the ‘EU’ or not. I think it’s dangerous to cheer any collapse. History tells us that lesson.

[Casino]

24 minutes ago, tomski said:

Whether you want to be part of the ‘EU’ or not. I think it’s dangerous to cheer any collapse. History tells us that lesson.

Theyll be the first to bleat when millions of pierres and jurgens rock up

GSTQ

No surrender

[Lt. Aldo Raine]

Imagine being so shit on immigration over the years you end up being outflanked on immigration control by the Labour Party

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Lt. Aldo Raine said:

Imagine being so shit on immigration over the years you end up being outflanked on immigration control by the Labour Party

 

Alternatively you could say ‘imagine being so naive as to promise economic growth whilst lowering immigration’. 
 

And that would apply to both Tories and Labour. And pretty much every political party who says they intend to cut immigration. Not one is honest that all our growth is based on immigration and if we are cutting it, look forward to less prosperity and worse living standards. 

At best Starmer is taking a hard line on it in public as good politics but I fear that like the Tories he’s setting up either failure on the economy or failure to bring numbers down significantly. 
 

 

[gonzo]

23 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:

Alternatively you could say ‘imagine being so naive as to promise economic growth whilst lowering immigration’. 
 

And that would apply to both Tories and Labour. And pretty much every political party who says they intend to cut immigration. Not one is honest that all our growth is based on immigration and if we are cutting it, look forward to less prosperity and worse living standards. 

At best Starmer is taking a hard line on it in public as good politics but I fear that like the Tories he’s setting up either failure on the economy or failure to bring numbers down significantly. 
 

 

All that depends entirely on the quality of migrants we allow in.

 

[Sweep]

As @gonzosays, it depends on the quality of migrants that we allow in, but there is an issue  -  it's clear we need immigration, unfortunately, we need a lot of low skilled immigration (fruit picking & hospitality industries in particular). I know your average Gammon is of the mind that "we should make our own do it" but that's just never, ever going to happen, sadly.

No matter who is in charge, we'll never reduce the numbers coming in, because we need them (I'm talking about those here legally)

Edited December 4, 2024 by Sweep

[Lt. Aldo Raine]

Indeed

We accommodate a lot of economically unproductive immigration

[gonzo]

Didn't help we decided to leave the biggest trading block on the planet with freedom of movement for decent economic migrants.

Now we just get fodder from elsewhere.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, gonzo said:

All that depends entirely on the quality of migrants we allow in.

 

It doesn’t really though does it? We need people in many cases to do low paid shit jobs. Increasing productivity through growth of a low paid work base that can increase. It’s what our economy has been based on for decades.

Yes we need some skills importing too but to be frank it’s the care workers, delivery drivers, laborers, farm workers etc that will be needed to drive growth. We had a ready supply from the east of Europe whilst in the EU. Now we have to look further afield. But you can’t do that whilst cutting immigration. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, gonzo said:

Didn't help we decided to leave the biggest trading block on the planet with freedom of movement for decent economic migrants.

Now we just get fodder from elsewhere.

Exactly. Especially when you consider that the migrants we could bring from Europe often didn’t stay here long term. And some were happy to be seasonal too. It was a pretty good system. We threw it away. 

[deeane Koontz]

The fact that a good few people told me they voted leave because there was too many brown people will never not be piss funny looking at how things have turned out 🤐

[royal white]

17 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:

It doesn’t really though does it? We need people in many cases to do low paid shit jobs. Increasing productivity through growth of a low paid work base that can increase. It’s what our economy has been based on for decades.

Yes we need some skills importing too but to be frank it’s the care workers, delivery drivers, laborers, farm workers etc that will be needed to drive growth. We had a ready supply from the east of Europe whilst in the EU. Now we have to look further afield. But you can’t do that whilst cutting immigration. 

Basically modern day slaves 👍

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, royal white said:

Basically modern day slaves 👍

Low paid workers. Minimum wage workers. Though I’m sure that when pay rises are discussed you are in favour….

[royal white]

2 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:

Low paid workers. Minimum wage workers. Though I’m sure that when pay rises are discussed you are in favour….

Labour have increased the minimum wage whilst at the same time promised to get people back to work. Hopefully We shouldn’t have to be to reliant on people coming over for work. (There’s nothing really stopping people coming over now for seasonal work) 

[Lt. Aldo Raine]

It remains within our gift to make the country a more attractive proposition to migrants from Europe even now, if that were thought to be necessary

It's a matter of political will

But on the growth argument, we can't achieve growth with mass immigration if too much of that immigration is economically inactive, and we also can't achieve growth if too many economically active immigrants are out of work, eg. 41% of economically active Somali-born male immigrants are unemployed, with 39% of their female equivalents also not in a job

[Sweep]

1 hour ago, bwfcfan5 said:

Exactly. Especially when you consider that the migrants we could bring from Europe often didn’t stay here long term. And some were happy to be seasonal too. It was a pretty good system. We threw it away. 

Indeed. Getting rid of "freedom of movement" is the one parti bit about Brexit that still irks me a little bit

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Lt. Aldo Raine said:

It remains within our gift to make the country a more attractive proposition to migrants from Europe even now, if that were thought to be necessary

It's a matter of political will

But on the growth argument, we can't achieve growth with mass immigration if too much of that immigration is economically inactive, and we also can't achieve growth if too many economically active immigrants are out of work, eg. 41% of economically active Somali-born male immigrants are unemployed, with 39% of their female equivalents also not in a job

Virtually all our growth is linked to immigration in the last two decades. So the reality is - unless we stop the boomer generation retiring and work them till they die and find other ways to grow the workforce - growth will be almost exclusively driven by numbers we add in. 

[Guest]

59 minutes ago, royal white said:

Labour have increased the minimum wage whilst at the same time promised to get people back to work. Hopefully We shouldn’t have to be to reliant on people coming over for work. (There’s nothing really stopping people coming over now for seasonal work) 

We are reliant because large chunks of our workforce have come to retirement age and there aren’t the numbers behind them. Not for growth. 

[royal white]

3 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:

We are reliant because large chunks of our workforce have come to retirement age and there aren’t the numbers behind them. Not for growth. 

And large chunks are refusing to work for whatever reason (I think we can have a guess) so surely relying on these people first is a better option? 

[Tonge moor green jacket]

1 hour ago, gonzo said:

Didn't help we decided to leave the biggest trading block on the planet with freedom of movement for decent economic migrants.

Now we just get fodder from elsewhere.

We had no control over anyone from the EU, either good or bad.

Folk seem to forget Poles living umpteen to a house, and sharing a bed between shifts. 

Money going back to families over there.

All while we effectively subsidised the Polish economy.

Same for Romanians too.

Troubles the Eastern Europeans caused market stall holders through stealing, and mugs like me having to clear up their shit holes. 

The lack of control recently has been because of completely shit policies, listening to the wrong think tanks with their suggestions to increase the flow, and shit implementation of whatever controls we do/did have. The upshot of which resulted in the boot. Precisely what was behind the vote for so many. 

We now have access to a much greater labour market for those migrants that will genuinely better our nation.

As the Lt. said, it's simply about reducing numbers and only getting those few we actually do need.

 

[Tonge moor green jacket]

15 minutes ago, royal white said:

And large chunks are refusing to work for whatever reason (I think we can have a guess) so surely relying on these people first is a better option? 

Bringing in migrants also raises the average age of the population, as they tend to have fewer kids when they arrive.

In turn, that just pushes all the consequent ageing issues higher as the years progress.

A read a piece recently about the age increase, and yet the birth rate is plummeting. 

In other words, population increase is by migration. A real shit storm for the future, let alone now.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, royal white said:

And large chunks are refusing to work for whatever reason (I think we can have a guess) so surely relying on these people first is a better option? 

But they aren’t are they? Unemployment rates have been historically low. It’s a myth that there is a big workforce we can co-opt here. It doesn’t exist. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Tonge moor green jacket said:

We had no control over anyone from the EU, either good or bad.

Folk seem to forget Poles living umpteen to a house, and sharing a bed between shifts. 

Money going back to families over there.

All while we effectively subsidised the Polish economy.

Same for Romanians too.

Troubles the Eastern Europeans caused market stall holders through stealing, and mugs like me having to clear up their shit holes. 

The lack of control recently has been because of completely shit policies, listening to the wrong think tanks with their suggestions to increase the flow, and shit implementation of whatever controls we do/did have. The upshot of which resulted in the boot. Precisely what was behind the vote for so many. 

We now have access to a much greater labour market for those migrants that will genuinely better our nation.

As the Lt. said, it's simply about reducing numbers and only getting those few we actually do need.

 

We don’t need ‘a few’. We need a lot and rising each year.

We didn’t prop up their economy, they helped grow ours. Their work meant that we built more, harvested more, cared more and that was what underpinned our growth.

There are of course downsides but we have to be honest about the trade offs. If you went fewer migrants we all need to accept being poorer for a long time. I don’t mind if that’s what you prefer but governments can’t keep pretending there is a magic button to achieve both.