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UK Politics - From Russia with Love


Which Tyler

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20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Hereward

Figured I'd move this here because I wanted to clarify something. It's my understanding. from afar, that the UK wants to limit immigration in general. When I referenced those groups I meant that they wouldn't come to make up the slack for the lower birth rate. 

I think most people aren't anti-immigration. We tend to like to consider ourselves moderate, and would favour moderate immigration. Immigration lately has been quite high, and there are questions about how to adapt our infrastructure for that, which politicians like to ignore by making ridiculous predictions about immigration falling massively. 

Our population is forecasted to grow significantly in the next few decades (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin) and even to overtake Germany's, making us the most populated country in Europe. 

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22 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I think most people aren't anti-immigration. We tend to like to consider ourselves moderate, and would favour moderate immigration. Immigration lately has been quite high, and there are questions about how to adapt our infrastructure for that, which politicians like to ignore by making ridiculous predictions about immigration falling massively. 

Our population is forecasted to grow significantly in the next few decades (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin) and even to overtake Germany's, making us the most populated country in Europe. 

Indeed. Which would have also made us the richest and therefore most influential country in the EU (had we stayed in) and would have given us a much stronger voice in, and control over, Europe-wide policy.

Unlike now, of course, when France and Germany will get to determine European policy (which will unavoidably impact on us) and we can do jack shit about it.

Population growth is also the most reliable way of driving economic growth and expansion. Since the goal is to limit population growth, or even reverse it calamitously (not to mention moving from having immigration to birth as a prime driver of population growth means going from having hundreds of thousands of eager new adult purchasers of goods in Britain every year to hundreds of thousands of babies who don't need iPhones or Sky subscriptions), Britain will have to effectively abandon growth-based western capitalism as its economic model. Curiously, I have yet to hear from the Conservative Brexiteers on what model will replace it.

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Little thing from this morning:

Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, is on the radio talking up their Scottish conference. He's burbling about how the party is really getting its message across and setting the agenda. Presenter asks him how he can say that when his party is low in the polls and losing votes. Mr Rennie scoffs, and indignantly asks how his party can possibly be losing votes when it went from one MP to four in the last election?

Except... as Willie Rennie well knows, that's exactly what happened. In the 2017 election, his party gained three seats but decreased both its share of the vote (by around one percentage point) and its absolute number of votes (by some tens of thousands). It gained seats from a quirk of the FPTP system, which actually favours the Lib Dems in Scotland, as their support is geographically concentrated in a few constituencies. A small bump in those constituencies, outweighed by falls elsewhere, resulted in a gain of three seats.

It's simply a fact that Willie Rennie's party lost votes in that election, and he knows it. Yet he's out there brass-necking it, ridiculing a claim that he knows to be true. Or to put it another way: telling bare-faced lies.

If anyone here is ever tempted to believe the Lib Dems are different from the other parties? Honest, principled, and all that? Remember this little anecdote.

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Meanwhile the EU is not really interested in kicking the Irish border issue into the long grass any longer and want a workable solution from the UK by June.

So this will get interesting. I have my money on May backing down on the customs union, and Farage and Johnson crying about the big betrayal.

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1 hour ago, Notone said:

Meanwhile the EU is not really interested in kicking the Irish border issue into the long grass any longer and want a workable solution from the UK by June.

So this will get interesting. I have my money on May backing down on the customs union, and Farage and Johnson crying about the big betrayal.

Apparently there's also going to be a Commons vote on staying in a Customs Union soon. It's apparently non-binding but if there are people in the Cabinet who are willing to back the Customs Union then it would help their cause against the Brexiters if it passes.

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Population growth is also the most reliable way of driving economic growth and expansion. Since the goal is to limit population growth, or even reverse it calamitously (not to mention moving from having immigration to birth as a prime driver of population growth means going from having hundreds of thousands of eager new adult purchasers of goods in Britain every year to hundreds of thousands of babies who don't need iPhones or Sky subscriptions), Britain will have to effectively abandon growth-based western capitalism as its economic model. Curiously, I have yet to hear from the Conservative Brexiteers on what model will replace it.

Wow, that's one big generalisation. I don't know how much you know about Romania, but that logic can prove nothing less than catastrophic. Population growth does tend to build a stronger economy, providing the social infrastructure is there. We aren't building that infrastructure. We aren't building the houses. 

I would hope every country in the world is trying to limit population growth, I feel it is the main cause of ecological destruction. There comes a point where this model of more immigration, more growth, has to contend with the logic that our country and our planet has limited space and resources. 

If we're looking at long term economic models, you've got to consider the role of automation. Yes, the powerful have been happy with net immigration figures in the hundreds of thousands when they're cleaning up after them, driving their taxis, keeping all these wages nice and low (unsurprisingly, the poor people competing for these jobs have been less happy about this situation). But what about when a robot is cleaning your toilet, and your taxi drives itself, and this people aren't "driving economic growth", they're expecting their share of the universal standard wage? 

Anyway, almost none of this is a Brexit issue, really. It would all be an issue whether we were in or out the EU. But having control of our borders doesn't mean we have to restrict immigration, it just means we have more choice. If we want, we can take in even more immigrants. 

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It's astonished me how quickly the left has embraced the mantra of economic growth above all. I'm sure that used to be a right wing thing. Is it just to try to win the immigration argument? Infinite population growth will simply lead to worse standards of living in the long run, as the planet is finite in extent. Humanity (and the planet) will be much better off if we accept the short term pain of an aging population, and allow numbers to stabilise.

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I think that is the left's position (in as far as "the left" is a very broad church and has no one set of policies spanning all of the parts of that spectrum)? That globalisation and unchecked economic growth has led us to the current situation of mass corporate corruption (legal and not), a compromised media, degraded workers' rights, environmental catastrophe and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and this all needs to be fixed from the perspective of a rapidly changing world, technologically and ideologically.

I'm pretty sure that's the underlying challenge of the 21st Century: the current economic paradigm has run its course, is coming to its end and is unsustainable from a practical or technological viewpoint, so will have to change, with the possible outcomes ranging from the utopian (a world where most people don't have to work and robots and AI do drudgery for us) to Fallout.

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9 hours ago, williamjm said:

Apparently there's also going to be a Commons vote on staying in a Customs Union soon. It's apparently non-binding but if there are people in the Cabinet who are willing to back the Customs Union then it would help their cause against the Brexiters if it passes.

I am somewhat sceptical of its chances to pass. I am pretty sure there will be a few Tories voting for it (Soubry comes to mind). The problem will be Labour. Corbyn has thus far always delivered the required votes to prop up May when it came to Brexit. So what should stop captain soundbite from doing it, again? So it comes down to Labour MPs to walk the walk and defy Corbyn. Will there be Labour MPs to vote for it? Yes. Will there be enough? I doubt it.

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14 hours ago, Werthead said:

Indeed. Which would have also made us the richest and therefore most influential country in the EU (had we stayed in) and would have given us a much stronger voice in, and control over, Europe-wide policy.

Unlike now, of course, when France and Germany will get to determine European policy (which will unavoidably impact on us) and we can do jack shit about it.

Population growth is also the most reliable way of driving economic growth and expansion. Since the goal is to limit population growth, or even reverse it calamitously (not to mention moving from having immigration to birth as a prime driver of population growth means going from having hundreds of thousands of eager new adult purchasers of goods in Britain every year to hundreds of thousands of babies who don't need iPhones or Sky subscriptions), Britain will have to effectively abandon growth-based western capitalism as its economic model. Curiously, I have yet to hear from the Conservative Brexiteers on what model will replace it.

Most countries have seen very big drops in the birthrate over the past thirty to forty years.  For example, China which had a total fertility rate of 6 in 1978, has seen it drop to about 1.7 now, which is below our own. So, most countries are going to have to develop models of growth that do not rely on a rising population.

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10 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think that is the left's position (in as far as "the left" is a very broad church and has no one set of policies spanning all of the parts of that spectrum)? That globalisation and unchecked economic growth has led us to the current situation of mass corporate corruption (legal and not), a compromised media, degraded workers' rights, environmental catastrophe and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and this all needs to be fixed from the perspective of a rapidly changing world, technologically and ideologically.

I'm pretty sure that's the underlying challenge of the 21st Century: the current economic paradigm has run its course, is coming to its end and is unsustainable from a practical or technological viewpoint, so will have to change, with the possible outcomes ranging from the utopian (a world where most people don't have to work and robots and AI do drudgery for us) to Fallout.

Globalisation has been extremely good for countries like China, South Korea, Taiwan, where forty years ago, most of the population were living in dire poverty.  But, it's been poor for a lot of blue-collar workers in Western countries.

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3 hours ago, Notone said:

I am somewhat sceptical of its chances to pass. I am pretty sure there will be a few Tories voting for it (Soubry comes to mind). The problem will be Labour. Corbyn has thus far always delivered the required votes to prop up May when it came to Brexit. So what should stop captain soundbite from doing it, again? So it comes down to Labour MPs to walk the walk and defy Corbyn. Will there be Labour MPs to vote for it? Yes. Will there be enough? I doubt it.

It's difficult to keep track sometimes, but I think Labour's official policy is currently saying that they'd want to stay in a customs union with Europe so they might vote for this proposal even if they're not going to vote against Brexit.

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50 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Most countries have seen very big drops in the birthrate over the past thirty to forty years.  For example, China

Er... if there is a worse country to use as an example in this conversation than China, I really can't think of what it might be. To say the least, China is not typical.

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33 minutes ago, mormont said:

Er... if there is a worse country to use as an example in this conversation than China, I really can't think of what it might be. To say the least, China is not typical.

Yeah given the one child policy...

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52 minutes ago, mormont said:

Er... if there is a worse country to use as an example in this conversation than China, I really can't think of what it might be. To say the least, China is not typical.

The one child model is certainly not one I'd want to follow.  But, it's an interesting example of a country doing very well economically, at the same time as seeing its birthrate fall sharply.  The same is true of several Eastern European countries (some of which have seen their populations fall).

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40 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The one child model is certainly not one I'd want to follow.  But, it's an interesting example of a country doing very well economically, at the same time as seeing its birthrate fall sharply.  The same is true of several Eastern European countries (some of which have seen their populations fall).

'Interesting' is not the word I'd use for a policy of forcible birth restriction imposed by a dictatorial government over decades. But be that as it may, interesting or not, as an example it doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion, since it's unique.

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On 21.04.2018 at 0:46 AM, mankytoes said:

Wow, that's one big generalisation. I don't know how much you know about Romania, but that logic can prove nothing less than catastrophic. Population growth does tend to build a stronger economy, providing the social infrastructure is there. We aren't building that infrastructure. We aren't building the houses. 

I would hope every country in the world is trying to limit population growth, I feel it is the main cause of ecological destruction. There comes a point where this model of more immigration, more growth, has to contend with the logic that our country and our planet has limited space and resources. 

If we're looking at long term economic models, you've got to consider the role of automation. Yes, the powerful have been happy with net immigration figures in the hundreds of thousands when they're cleaning up after them, driving their taxis, keeping all these wages nice and low (unsurprisingly, the poor people competing for these jobs have been less happy about this situation). But what about when a robot is cleaning your toilet, and your taxi drives itself, and this people aren't "driving economic growth", they're expecting their share of the universal standard wage? 

Anyway, almost none of this is a Brexit issue, really. It would all be an issue whether we were in or out the EU. But having control of our borders doesn't mean we have to restrict immigration, it just means we have more choice. If we want, we can take in even more immigrants. 

Can you elaborate what you mean with the bolded? 

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41 minutes ago, Ser Reptitious said:

Can you elaborate what you mean with the bolded? 

Romania's brutal communist leader, Ceausescu, realised to strengthen his country he needed a bigger population, saying "demography was destiny". He outlawed abortion, gave extra benefits to women who had five children, and women who had ten were declared "heroine mothers" (this sort of thing has always been popular with dictators, Hitler gave a medal to mothers who had lots of kids). This led to mass child abandonment and these truly nightmarish orphanages. And Ceausescu failed in his goal to make Romania and world power, his people ended up in horrible poverty, before they had him overthrown and killed. 

There is a link between having a large population and being a strong and influential country, but it is no guarantee. There are lots of potential problems with trying to grow your population, whether through mass immigration or trying to inflate birthrates. 

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

I think the comparison with Romania can be filed with the comparison to China. Not useful or relevant to the discussion.

If you're going to say that, I'd appreciate it if you at least gave some reason why, that seems a bit dismissive. What happened in Romania demonstrates why population growth isn't an absolute good, for the economy, for society or for anything else. And we are going to see further significant population growth over the next few decades, that is almost certain. You can say China is unique, and Romania is unique, but all countries are unique, it's very hard to get two that are similar enough for any kind of rational method of comparison to be used, you have to resort to just using examples. 

An interesting, and perhaps more relevant, comparison is with Japan, who have been much more restrictive on immigration, a low birthrate, and have had a lot of periods without much growth. 

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