248 replies to this topic

[Sci-2]

Brienne the Beauty, on 02 May 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

Did your Google break?

You're European right? Well, I'm American -> It's every non-Americans' job to educate me about the world. ;-)

(In all seriousness, touche Lady of Tarth, but it's too specific a question for Google to do that well with.)

[Nukelavee]

Plus, every time he goes to Google, he gets sidetracked by pages for "the Wire".

[Sci-2]

Nukelavee, on 02 May 2012 - 04:51 PM, said:

Plus, every time he goes to Google, he gets sidetracked by pages for "the Wire".

I contend the Wire is applicable to just about every topic on this board.

[Brienne the Beauty]

sciborg2, on 02 May 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:

(In all seriousness, touche Lady of Tarth, but it's too specific a question for Google to do that well with.)

In fairness to you, I tried it myself but it mostly returns some pretty dubious pages. Stormfront, the BNP, and the like.

[Eloisa]

"Europe" is probably too varied an entity for figures to be available as a whole.  This linkis to the Office for National Statistics' most recent report.

http://www.homeoffic...tion-q3-summary and http://www.homeoffic...ics?view=Binary might also be useful links on the topic.  Unfortunately I couldn't get either of them to load (annoying Internet Explorer... I'm at work, what can I say), so maybe, maybe not.

(Also, that UK government drive to reduce net migration?  Students are the easiest target: crack down on quantities of student visas issued to foreign nationals, and voila, the immigration numbers immediately reduce.  Unfortunately this is currently tanking one section of the economy, namely the private adult education college section and its suppliers.  Guess whose company is losing business because one of our client colleges is losing business due to the immigration cuts?  Bravo, government: do everything necessary to destroy the economy and then, in the face of evidence to the contrary, keep doing it.  I'm not bitter or anything, honest...)

[Lummel]

Don't worry Eloisa, Boris will win the London election today and save you as the great conservative hope (once he's toppled Cameron).

[Brienne the Beauty]

Eloisa, on 03 May 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:

Unfortunately this is currently tanking one section of the economy, namely the private adult education college section and its suppliers.  Guess whose company is losing business because one of our client colleges is losing business due to the immigration cuts?  Bravo, government: do everything necessary to destroy the economy and then, in the face of evidence to the contrary, keep doing it.  I'm not bitter or anything, honest...)

At the time, they were having problems with "fake colleges" where foreign students signed up for a class but maybe turned up for one lesson a week and spent the rest of the time working.

[Eloisa]

Brienne the Beauty, on 03 May 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

At the time, they were having problems with "fake colleges" where foreign students signed up for a class but maybe turned up for one lesson a week and spent the rest of the time working.

That's a reason to crack down on fake colleges.  It's not a reason to cut visa capability for real colleges: that one strikes me as ideological - keep the brown folk out of the country, no matter how much they're going to spend while they're here.  I don't believe there was any evidence of a serious problem of genuine students at genuine colleges absconding to work at the end of their genuine studies.  (Then again, those feckless workshy families in which no one has worked for three generations?  Maybe 20 families in the whole of England and Wales.  The government is fond of making mountains out of molehills.)

It's like the rationale for the charity gift aid relief being capped at £50K "because some people donate to fake charities set up to support their families".  Cap gift aid for other reasons if you want to.  But if you're worried about fake charity donations hiding wealth and saving tax in one fell swoop, crack down on fake charities.

[Ser Robin Hill]

Where does this idea that countries must import people, come from?  The US goes through its deepest recession in modern history with unemployment at absurdly high levels, yet was still importing more people.  That's my definition of insanity.  Oh, wait...corporations want cheap labor.