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UK Politics: rooting for the vegetables


mormont

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37 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

 He seemed to have good presence and could think on his feet.

He’s generally pretty wooden, his lack of charisma is one of the things he’s criticised for, so I wouldn’t buy into that impression too much. He’s not usually as awkward as Truss but, you know, that’s a pretty low bar.

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Really really dislike braverman

Sunak absolutely refusing to answer questions regarding braverman is really not great.

Also, Sunak chiding Starmer about living in North London when he lives in Kensington in a house that cost millions is quite something.

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I doubt Sunak likes Braverman either, she is really only there as a signal to the right of the party that he’s not going to take the open borders policy of Truss as an option. 
 

Im sure she will be gone as soon as things calm down a bit. Which is a good thing, she is a total moron, everything she says is a complete performance, and a bad one. She is a worthless climber.

It looks like Sunak has basically said to to the right of the party that they can have all the culture stuff, he doesn’t care about it, just let him get on with the economic bit, the bit he’s really interested in

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20 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I doubt Sunak likes Braverman either, she is really only there as a signal to the right of the party that he’s not going to take the open borders policy of Truss as an option. 
 

Im sure she will be gone as soon as things calm down a bit. Which is a good thing, she is a total moron, everything she says is a complete performance, and a bad one. She is a worthless climber.

It looks like Sunak has basically said to to the right of the party that they can have all the culture stuff, he doesn’t care about it, just let him get on with the economic bit, the bit he’s really interested in

The problem is that the two things are linked. More open immigration would improve the growth and has economic benefits, that's why Truss wanted it.

Sunak presents himself as a very sound economist (and in some ways he is) but he's also against a load of stuff that would bring economic benefits (e.g. immigration, the EU, onshore wind) in order to appease the right wing culture warriors and further his own career.

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52 minutes ago, Raja said:

Really really dislike braverman

Braverman is basically an even worse version of Truss. No discernable talent, ambition vastly outweighs talent, willing to throw anyone under the bus, inexplicably popular with the grass roots. She just picked a different right wing cargo cult.

52 minutes ago, Raja said:

Also, Sunak chiding Starmer about living in North London when he lives in Kensington in a house that cost millions is quite something.

'I know he rarely leaves North London' says man who frequently flies to his second home in Santa Monica and whose constituency address is an actual mansion.

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11 minutes ago, Lady_Qohor said:

The problem is that the two things are linked. More open immigration would improve the growth and has economic benefits, that's why Truss wanted it.

Sunak presents himself as a very sound economist (and in some ways he is) but he's also against a load of stuff that would bring economic benefits (e.g. immigration, the EU, onshore wind) in order to appease the right wing culture warriors and further his own career.

More open immigration brings economic benefits in the form of low paid low skilled workers, and that’s great if you want to set you economy up to exploit lots of low paid low skilled workers, which unfortunately is the crack the UK is hooked on. 

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3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

More open immigration brings economic benefits in the form of low paid low skilled workers, and that’s great if you want to set you economy up to exploit lots of low paid low skilled workers, which unfortunately is the crack the UK is hooked on. 

Not the point tho. The UK needs immigration to replace the aging workforce that heads off into the sunset (retirement). And (somewhat related to it) to do the jobs most Brits don't want to do/can't do. Seasonal workers in the farming sector (fruit pickers) and nursing jobs come to mind. 

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28 minutes ago, Lady_Qohor said:

Sunak presents himself as a very sound economist (and in some ways he is) but he's also against a load of stuff that would bring economic benefits (e.g. immigration, the EU, onshore wind) in order to appease the right wing culture warriors and further his own career.

It’s a shame because it’s not an entirely unreasonable bet.

So long as he fearmongers about x marginalized group the right has chosen to attack(usually trans people),  the culture war right will stand any way economic drawbacks. Because they’d rather destroy their nation than depart from their reactionary views.

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

More open immigration brings economic benefits in the form of low paid low skilled workers, and that’s great if you want to set you economy up to exploit lots of low paid low skilled workers

You my nearly always stringent capitalist friend do not care about the well-being of low-skilled immigrants.

Like if citizens filled all the jobs immigrants usually filled but got paid the same or less you wouldn’t have problem, and chalk it up to life being unfair sometimes.

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3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not the point tho. The UK needs immigration to replace the aging workforce that heads off into the sunset (retirement). And (somewhat related to it) to do the jobs most Brits don't want to do/can't do. Seasonal workers in the farming sector (fruit pickers) and nursing jobs come to mind. 

Unfortunately  can point to any economic benefit of immigration you want it won’t change the minds of the culture warrior who’ve innate disgust towards immigration. 

Also for many men in the culture warrior right there’s a fear of women they perceive as theirs shacking up with an immigrant.

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11 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not the point tho. The UK needs immigration to replace the aging workforce that heads off into the sunset (retirement). And (somewhat related to it) to do the jobs most Brits don't want to do/can't do. Seasonal workers in the farming sector (fruit pickers) and nursing jobs come to mind. 

Well firstly that’s a problem facing almost all western societies, oh and China. Constantly importing new people rather than longer term thinking like solving the reasons why people can’t afford to have children is the easy and blinkered option.

And somewhat related that low paying jobs that don’t pay enough for native Brits to even live on might attract more Brits if they paid more and treated workers better, rather than get away with exploiting foreign workers for years. HGV drivers are an example of a job nobody wanted to do because of shitty pay and conditions, but suddenly became quite popular because they were forced into being better 

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4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Well firstly that’s a problem facing almost all western societies, oh and China. Constantly importing new people rather than longer term thinking like solving the reasons why people can’t afford to have children is the easy and blinkered option.

 

Sure, there's a discussion to be had, but it's gotta be a bit more comprehensive than merely pay. Work-life-balance, providing childcare options to women, who want to get back into the job after giving birth etc. Yes, those are issues that should be addressed (maybe Rees-Twat will hire a nanny for every household :dunno:). But that's doesn't address the short term need to replace the outgoing workforce. I don't know if you knew that, but children are not proper workers at the age of 6, 10, 14. So even if you managed to make having children more attractive, those kids would only be ready to replace the outgoing workers in like 20 years. 

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2 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

In his defense He’d probably have no problem with a 6 year old“native” Brit taking a job to feed their family if it meant one less immigrant in society.

 

 

HoI knows I don't agree with most or like many of his positions any more than the rest of us, but making him out to be a boogeyman who wants to enslave children and is scared of foreign men bagging our white British women has no relation to anything he's ever actually said and helps nothing.

 

 

 

On Braverman: it's good that her resigning and being re-hired six days later is being used properly as an attack point by the opposition and that, but it's sad that it's a more effective one than her expressing genuinely giggly glee at the idea of sending off a plane full of asylum seekers to Rwanda.

 

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52 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Sure, there's a discussion to be had, but it's gotta be a bit more comprehensive than merely pay. Work-life-balance, providing childcare options to women, who want to get back into the job after giving birth etc. Yes, those are issues that should be addressed (maybe Rees-Twat will hire a nanny for every household :dunno:). But that's doesn't address the short term need to replace the outgoing workforce. I don't know if you knew that, but children are not proper workers at the age of 6, 10, 14. So even if you managed to make having children more attractive, those kids would only be ready to replace the outgoing workers in like 20 years. 

Sure, nobody is suggesting cutting immigration to zero, but Truss was happy to keep immigration levels extortinatly high, probably forever because that fits her vision for how the economy works. Medium to long term we need to find a way to get off that train because it’s not sustainable anyway, at some point immigrants get old too and then you just need to bring in more to pay for their retirement.

Maybe we do need a shock to the system to force a different vision for the future, rather than just carrying on endlessly down the same path.

Plus even in the short term there is slack in the native employment market, you could fill a lot more positions if they pay and conditions became more acceptable. 

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1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

Sure, nobody is suggesting cutting immigration to zero, but Truss was happy to keep immigration levels extortinatly high, probably forever because that fits her vision for how the economy works.

And that is a problem because?

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Medium to long term we need to find a way to get off that train because it’s not sustainable anyway,

what evidence do you have for this position of it being unsustainable? And how long do you think it can be sustained?

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

at some point immigrants get old too and then you just need to bring in more to pay for their retirement.

At that point if they haven’t already been naturalized why not just regard them as citizens? Like if a guy came and worked in Britain 50 years ago when he was 18 why not help pay for his retirement?

6 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Maybe we do need a shock to the system to force a different vision for the future, rather than just carrying on endlessly down the same path.

You haven’t pointed to a significant negative so far.

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Plus even in the short term there is slack in the native employment market, you could fill a lot more positions if they pay and conditions became more acceptable. 

Hey genuine question  how exactly do you want to help the would-be immigrants once they’re not allowed to come to country to get money to feed themselves and/or their families?
Because the conditions that compelled them to seek employment elsewhere would still be present.

I only ask this because you’ve waxed concern about British companies exploiting these people.

12 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Plus even in the short term there is slack in the native employment market, you could fill a lot more positions if they pay and conditions became more acceptable. 

True. 
 

What do you think can help accomplish this and why??

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 is scared of foreign men bagging our white British women has no relation to anything he's ever actually said and helps nothing.

Perhaps the former comment (not included here) is out of line -- the latter is not. If I had a penny for every 'cultural assimilation' and immigration fear mongering from Brexit to now ... Well I'd have quite a few pennies. Anyhow, if that perspective has changed then I applaud that.

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The funniest thing about this immigration debate is that since Brexit the Migration advisory commitee, which is the main public body that advises the government on immigration, has repetedly made it a lot easier for immigrants to come to the UK because of severe shortages within the UK workforce. That's why it's never a better time to come over here if you're in jobs that are determined to be on the shortage occupation list, which is *a lot* of jobs, and why immigration from Non-EU countries has risen quite a bit ( the NHS specifically has a lot of these because it is so chronically short staffed).

This has led to Steve Barclay stating these two things

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We must use our new-found freedoms outside the EU to promote and champion our workers, rather than undercutting them with imported labour which dampens down wages and undermines the breadth of home-grown skills and talent

Quote

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, wants an overseas hiring spree which NHS managers may also be sent to countries such as India aht the philippines to recruit thousands of nurses

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The formatting is being weird so I'm going to carry on from my previous post - there we have Barclay saying fairly contradictory things.

In addition, if you look at the impact it has on wages - this has varied between sectors with HGV drivers getting *some* benefit, but not really in real terms for low paid jobs

 

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 is scared of foreign men bagging our white British women has no relation to anything he's ever actually said and helps nothing.

Not sure if comments have been deleted, but I agree that this specific thing isn't something I would write & I think is not correct. However, there is a long history of anti immigrant & xenophobic comments that I haven't forgotten.

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From the FT article linked above:

Quote


The question of whether Britain should become more open to low-paid migrant workers is trickier. It’s clear that a number of sectors that had relied on EU workers under freedom of movement are now struggling with labour shortages, from hospitality to food and drink manufacturing. In a sense, that was the point of the government’s policy — to put those employers under pressure to do something differently. It’s also hard to disentangle the effect of Brexit from other factors such as the pandemic, which has caused labour shortages in countries all around the world. I think it’s clear that in some occupations, local workers have benefited from the end of freedom of movement. Many HGV drivers, for example, have seen pay rises in the range of 10 to 20 per cent since they found themselves in short supply, unions say.
 

Brexit wasn’t the only cause of the shortage, but for many years migration from the EU helped employers to limp on with an employment model based on relatively low pay for antisocial hours and a lot of responsibility

. That said, there are plenty of other sectors that have struggled to raise wages even though they can’t find enough staff. A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that vacancies for lower-paid jobs rose a lot between 2019 and 2021, but there was no correlation between vacancy growth and wage growth. Chris Forde, an academic who has been studying employer responses to Brexit, says there is also little sign yet of companies investing in automation as an alternative: “Employers we’ve spoken to have spoken about the quite profound challenges associated with automation — yes some processes can be automated . . . [but] they’re really expensive and they’re long-term investments.”

As I said before, you can’t just cut off immigration from a system that has become so dependent on it for so long and not expect issues. For HGV drivers yes it was a positive because there was enough of a system shock that bad employers had to do something but that won’t happen everywhere because that’s just how things are set up. 
 

Obviously a lot of employers are simply unwilling to pay their workers more, and I would challenge anyone trying to make hard conclusions based on data on wages during Covid and a supply side crisis. Also if companies are basing their entire models on being able to pay workers a pittance then it’s not going to change over night. 
 

Also, I think we’d all agree NHS workers are under paid and over worked right? Does Raja think we are doing enough to encourage British people to become doctors or nurses? Why do we need to be so heavily reliant on foreign workers? 
 

It almost always comes down to the problem that it’s easier and cheaper to just bring in people from abroad than actually deal with the bigger problems. Why invest in automation or long term planning when you can just get loads of cheap foreign workers. Why deal with the actual causes of an aging population when you can just do a quick fix by importing more people? Successive governments have had little appetite to deal with any of it, just papering over the cracks and talking about GDP and growth. 

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