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Post by graham on Jan 2, 2024 20:10:03 GMT
Yes, Dachau and Auschwitz are exactly the right reference points to use for discussing the extent to which public services improved or not in the early part of the 21st century in Britain. Well, they are I suppose if you have a tin ear and a cold heart and are quite happy to trivialise the suffering of the thousands of people who met their deaths in those mass extermination concentration camps. Only a self satisfied pillock inhabiting a smug and complacent world of their own, inoculated from the suffering he so glibly cites, could regularly defile sensible discussion with such inappropriate and lurid allusions. There is nothing trivialising about those references at all - and the tin ears and cold hearts belong to those who fail to see any connection. The public sector over a period of years - even decades - has increasingly relied on exploiting its workers as have care homes throughout the land. They are happy to use slave labour whenever they are able to get away with it - and if allusions to the most extreme examples from the past make others feel uncomfortable, perhaps I have made my point.
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 20:27:09 GMT
The Greens will not win in Bristol and will struggle to hold Brighton Pavilion. I wonder how much the Just Stop Oil nutters have damaged the potential Green vote?
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 20:40:34 GMT
colin"O'Brien says that the database for all migrant visas is poor, the Home Office has no proper records and abuse is rife." I didn't quote the whole thing to save space but it is indeed a shocking situation. The last thing the country needs is a constant massive influx of low-paid or economically inactive people. Apart from anything else oversupply of labour will automatically depress wages, especially for the low-paid.
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Post by graham on Jan 2, 2024 20:41:58 GMT
The Greens will not win in Bristol and will struggle to hold Brighton Pavilion. I wonder how much the Just Stop Oil nutters have damaged the potential Green vote? I am sure it will not have helped them - but they were no more likely towin a seat in Bristol this year than they were going to win Norwich South back in 2010. Despite much excitement and anticipation , they ended up coming 4th behind the Tories!
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Post by davem on Jan 2, 2024 20:56:48 GMT
Current birth rate in the UK is 1.6 per woman , so for every 100 people alive in the current child bearing generation will result in only 45 in three generations. This is why we have the unbalanced age distribution today. The rate of population growth has been falling for decades, any growth in recent years has been a result of people living longer, as life expectancy levels off we will start to see significant falls in population. Not if we keep importing hundreds of thousands every year We need to import that number to fill the jobs needed to care and support the ageing population and to pay the tax to fund state pensions.
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 2, 2024 21:01:38 GMT
Yes, Dachau and Auschwitz are exactly the right reference points to use for discussing the extent to which public services improved or not in the early part of the 21st century in Britain. Well, they are I suppose if you have a tin ear and a cold heart and are quite happy to trivialise the suffering of the thousands of people who met their deaths in those mass extermination concentration camps. Only a self satisfied pillock inhabiting a smug and complacent world of their own, inoculated from the suffering he so glibly cites, could regularly defile sensible discussion with such inappropriate and lurid allusions. There is nothing trivialising about those references at all - and the tin ears and cold hearts belong to those who fail to see any connection. The public sector over a period of years - even decades - has increasingly relied on exploiting its workers as have care homes throughout the land. They are happy to use slave labour whenever they are able to get away with it - and if allusions to the most extreme examples from the past make others feel uncomfortable, perhaps I have made my point. Slave labour? I seem to recall being paid for my services throughout the period I worked for local government (1989-2014), being free to join a trade union and also to leave at any time I wanted to. I will add that no one was trying to murder me or leave me to die of neglect and maltreatment (the Dachau reference). You do talk the most totally inappropriate nonsense at times. It is easy enough to express your disapproval of the Conservative and/or New Labour policies without using the Nazis as a (completely inappropriate) reference point.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 2, 2024 21:01:53 GMT
colin"O'Brien says that the database for all migrant visas is poor, the Home Office has no proper records and abuse is rife." I didn't quote the whole thing to save space but it is indeed a shocking situation. The last thing the country needs is a constant massive influx of low-paid or economically inactive people. Apart from anything else oversupply of labour will automatically depress wages, especially for the low-paid. The very avoidable problems this country has been subjected to in recent years have indeed been inflicted on us but a huge cohort of the economically inactive. Retired English people.
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 21:05:37 GMT
2. What exactly is yr alternative to voting Starmer. This ? Is endlessly put to the LOC refuseniks. Never answered. What odd sentences for a grammar-Nazi to write.
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Post by graham on Jan 2, 2024 21:15:04 GMT
There is nothing trivialising about those references at all - and the tin ears and cold hearts belong to those who fail to see any connection. The public sector over a period of years - even decades - has increasingly relied on exploiting its workers as have care homes throughout the land. They are happy to use slave labour whenever they are able to get away with it - and if allusions to the most extreme examples from the past make others feel uncomfortable, perhaps I have made my point. Slave labour? I seem to recall being paid for my services throughout the period I worked for local government (1989-2014), being free to join a trade union and also to leave at any time I wanted to. I will add that no one was trying to murder me or leave me to die of neglect and maltreatment (the Dachau reference). You do talk the most totally inappropriate nonsense at times. It is easy enough to express your disapproval of the Conservative and/or New Labour policies without using the Nazis as a (completely inappropriate) reference point. I wasn't threatened in that extreme way either in the Civil Service or whilst still lecturing. I did, however, feel seriously exploited - and the erosion of conditions of employment accumulated to the extent that many of us felt we were being used as 'slave labour' albeit not in a literal sense. The treatment of coal miners by some coal owners pre- Nationalisation merited such a term - as did the treatment of many farm labourers.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2024 21:25:40 GMT
2. What exactly is yr alternative to voting Starmer. This ? Is endlessly put to the LOC refuseniks. Never answered. What odd sentences for a grammar-Nazi to write. Who appointed you as the grammar-Nazi Nazi?
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 21:27:47 GMT
Not if we keep importing hundreds of thousands every year We need to import that number to fill the jobs needed to care and support the ageing population and to pay the tax to fund state pensions. Whether that is true or not, your original statement said "The rate of population growth has been falling for decades, any growth in recent years has been a result of people living longer, as life expectancy levels off we will start to see significant falls in population." We won't if current levels of immigration continue: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022"There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002" So yes, while you are right that births are declining they are outnumbered by net immigration which was around 750,000 in a year in the figures I last saw.
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Post by davem on Jan 2, 2024 21:29:45 GMT
Current birth rate in the UK is 1.6 per woman , so for every 100 people alive in the current child bearing generation will result in only 45 in three generations. This is why we have the unbalanced age distribution today. The rate of population growth has been falling for decades, any growth in recent years has been a result of people living longer, as life expectancy levels off we will start to see significant falls in population. erm, you says the rate of GROWTH has been falling for years? So then its still growing? Yep, we have an AGING population with therefore more non-working pensioners in poor health needing much more resources to keep them alive for yet longer. So they are consuming national resources, not adding to them. And we have for a very long time relied upon immigration to increase the population size. But nonetheless, its been a rising population not a falling one and still is. The 'unbalanced age distribution' we curently have is one where there is a surplus of young people. This is working through the system as the proportion of elderly moves towards balance and a smaller proportion of what we call working age. Recent rises in retirement age have been sold to the public on the basis we cannot afford hese pensions. But in reality the problem isnt money, but having enough workers. The changes in state retirement age do not affect people who are wealthy, who can retire whenever they want. But only those dependent on the state pension. So its about making the poor work longer to keep the rich in the level of health care. Yes the rate of growth has been falling, so the total population has increased. However we are reaching the intersection point where the effects of increasing life expectancy are more than cancelled out by the fall in the birth rate. At that point the population numbers fall. However, this leaves a population with an inverted age profile, where we have fewer young people of working age to do the jobs needed and to pay tax to fund the state to do those jobs. The numbers don’t lie, Take a population of 100, 50 male and 50 female, the current birth rate is 1.6 children per female. This produces 80 live births. Of the 80, say that gives 40 male and 40 females. The next generation is only 64. 32 male 32 female The next generation is only 51.2. These figures are optimistic as they don’t take account of deaths before women reach child bearing age. The birth rate to achieve a stable population is not 2, but 2.1. data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.INThis is a link to the World Bank data on fertility and birth rates. You will see that the birth rates across the world is falling. The richer the country the lower the birth rate in general. The projection is that the world population will peak in about 30 years time, with large differences between rich and poor countries, putting pressure on migration. Rich countries needed more workers and poor countries needing more development.. By arguing about increases in rich countries populations we are fighting the last war not the one to come.
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 21:30:23 GMT
colin "O'Brien says that the database for all migrant visas is poor, the Home Office has no proper records and abuse is rife." I didn't quote the whole thing to save space but it is indeed a shocking situation. The last thing the country needs is a constant massive influx of low-paid or economically inactive people. Apart from anything else oversupply of labour will automatically depress wages, especially for the low-paid. The very avoidable problems this country has been subjected to in recent years have indeed been inflicted on us but a huge cohort of the economically inactive. Retired English people. That's very disingenuous. Most of those will have contributed to the state for well over 40 years (48 in my case).
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Post by davem on Jan 2, 2024 21:31:10 GMT
We need to import that number to fill the jobs needed to care and support the ageing population and to pay the tax to fund state pensions. Whether that is true or not, your original statement said "The rate of population growth has been falling for decades, any growth in recent years has been a result of people living longer, as life expectancy levels off we will start to see significant falls in population." We won't if current levels of immigration continue: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022"There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002" So yes, while you are right that births are declining they are outnumbered by net immigration which was around 750,000 in a year in the figures I last saw. The numbers don’t lie, Take a population of 100, 50 male and 50 female, the current birth rate is 1.6 children per female. This produces 80 live births. Of the 80, say that gives 40 male and 40 females. The next generation is only 64. 32 male 32 female The next generation is only 51.2. These figures are optimistic as they don’t take account of deaths before women reach child bearing age. The birth rate to achieve a stable population is not 2, but 2.1. data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN This is a link to the World Bank data on fertility and birth rates. You will see that the birth rates across the world is falling. The richer the country the lower the birth rate in general. The projection is that the world population will peak in about 30 years time, with large differences between rich and poor countries, putting pressure on migration. Rich countries needed more workers and poor countries needing more development.. By arguing about increases in rich countries populations we are fighting the last war not the one to come.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 2, 2024 21:35:15 GMT
We need to import that number to fill the jobs needed to care and support the ageing population and to pay the tax to fund state pensions. We really dont. We need that number to keep down the wages of care sector workers. So the rich employing care workers, can stay rich.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 2, 2024 21:38:49 GMT
"There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002" So yes, while you are right that births are declining they are outnumbered by net immigration which was around 750,000 in a year in the figures I last saw. So in 75 years time, 60% of the population will be immigrants, and a big chunk of the remainder will be descendants of first generation immigrants? And obviously, Brexit will have made this takeover of the Uk by foreigners a lot more obvious because it wont be white europeans arriving here. Just what happens when the leave voters who were motivated by fear of immigration understand these numbers and the intent of the leave government they elected to supercharge immigration?
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 2, 2024 21:44:46 GMT
The numbers don’t lie, Take a population of 100, 50 male and 50 female, the current birth rate is 1.6 children per female. This produces 80 live births. Of the 80, say that gives 40 male and 40 females. The next generation is only 64. 32 male 32 female. The next generation is only 51.2. These figures are optimistic as they don’t take account of deaths before women reach child bearing age. The birth rate to achieve a stable population is not 2, but 2.1. Except that there are more immigrants than UK births according to numbers someone posted above. So the real reproduction rate is more than double the native births, so effective reproduction per UK female is more like 3.5.
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Post by mercian on Jan 2, 2024 21:56:37 GMT
"There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002" So yes, while you are right that births are declining they are outnumbered by net immigration which was around 750,000 in a year in the figures I last saw. So in 75 years time, 60% of the population will be immigrants, and a big chunk of the remainder will be descendants of first generation immigrants? And obviously, Brexit will have made this takeover of the Uk by foreigners a lot more obvious because it wont be white europeans arriving here. Just what happens when the leave voters who were motivated by fear of immigration understand these numbers and the intent of the leave government they elected to supercharge immigration? I did some back of an envelope calculations that showed that the native population (say descendants of those here since before WWII) would be outnumbered by 2050. In many cities they already are.
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Post by davem on Jan 2, 2024 21:58:13 GMT
We need to import that number to fill the jobs needed to care and support the ageing population and to pay the tax to fund state pensions. We really dont. We need that number to keep down the wages of care sector workers. So the rich employing care workers, can stay rich. We need the number to provide care for the likes of my 92 year old mum with Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. She is on pension credit so not rich. It is the poor who need the care. We need a government willing to run a state funded care service and pay a fair wage for skilled care work. The private sector needs to be removed from care.
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Post by davem on Jan 2, 2024 22:00:22 GMT
The numbers don’t lie, Take a population of 100, 50 male and 50 female, the current birth rate is 1.6 children per female. This produces 80 live births. Of the 80, say that gives 40 male and 40 females. The next generation is only 64. 32 male 32 female. The next generation is only 51.2. These figures are optimistic as they don’t take account of deaths before women reach child bearing age. The birth rate to achieve a stable population is not 2, but 2.1. Except that there are more immigrants than UK births according to numbers someone posted above. So the real reproduction rate is more than double the native births, so effective reproduction per UK female is more like 3.5. Short term thinking on a long time problem.
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pjw1961
Member
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Posts: 8,384
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 2, 2024 22:40:28 GMT
So in 75 years time, 60% of the population will be immigrants, and a big chunk of the remainder will be descendants of first generation immigrants? And obviously, Brexit will have made this takeover of the Uk by foreigners a lot more obvious because it wont be white europeans arriving here. Just what happens when the leave voters who were motivated by fear of immigration understand these numbers and the intent of the leave government they elected to supercharge immigration? I did some back of an envelope calculations that showed that the native population (say those here since before WWII) would be outnumbered by 2050. In many cities they already are. So Rishi Sunak (born in Southampton in 1980) is by your reckoning not part of the native population given that his ancestors were not present in the UK before WWII - that despite being the Prime Minister. Boris Johnson was born in New York in 1964 and until he gave it up in 2016 had dual UK/US citizenship. Is he part of the the 'native population'? Does it matter that his paternal grandfather was Osman Kemal, son of Ali Kemal Bey, an Ottoman minister or that he also has German ancestry? I think you may find that your concept of 'native population', given the highly mixed ancestry of these Isles, is going to prove difficult to pin down. To give another example - are the many people of Irish heritage living in Britain part of the 'native population' or not?
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Dave
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... I'm dreaming dreams, I'm scheming schemes, I'm building castles high ..
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Post by Dave on Jan 2, 2024 23:33:00 GMT
Throughout that period I worked in the public sector - education and the Civil Service. I experienced the ongoing erosion of working conditions of service coupled with a failure to increase pay levels. Salary increments disappeared and morale was at absolutely rock bottom - indeed far worse than under Thatcher back in the 1980s. Maybe it was different in the Health Service - but Local government workers were also very badly treated. I was in local government throughout the Blair/Brown years and this is frankly nonsense. I was also in local government 2010-14, during which time the council I worked for saw 40% of its income vanish thanks to Eric bloody Pickles and I (along with a lot of other people) was made redundant. There is simply no comparison. I was a member of police staff in the Met - basically a civil servant for 30 years up to 2013. I echo what you say 100% - no comparison indeed. Graham, either you got lucky, or only saw what you wanted to see, or you couldn’t see what was plain to the majority of the rest of us public servants.
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Dave
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... I'm dreaming dreams, I'm scheming schemes, I'm building castles high ..
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Post by Dave on Jan 2, 2024 23:42:19 GMT
Did they mention concentration camps as well? No - but I may have done so. I certainly referred in addresses given at Union meetings to the 'Arbeit Macht Frei ' wing of the Tory Party.. It was pretty well received! You are being deliberately provocative and obnoxious.
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Post by graham on Jan 2, 2024 23:47:56 GMT
I was in local government throughout the Blair/Brown years and this is frankly nonsense. I was also in local government 2010-14, during which time the council I worked for saw 40% of its income vanish thanks to Eric bloody Pickles and I (along with a lot of other people) was made redundant. There is simply no comparison. I was a member of police staff in the Met - basically a civil servant for 30 years up to 2013. I echo what you say 100% - no comparison indeed. Graham, either you got lucky, or only saw what you wanted to see, or you couldn’t see what was plain to the majority of the rest of us public servants. No - and I am not sure that Police Officers are seen as Civil Servants per se any more than are mebers of the Armed Forces..
This evening - since these exchanges began - I have spoken to someone who joined Norfolk County Council in 2001. He agrees totally with my comments re- changes which occurred pre- 2010 - and how depressing was his experience working in the Public Sector in the first decade of the 21st century.
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Post by graham on Jan 2, 2024 23:49:28 GMT
No - but I may have done so. I certainly referred in addresses given at Union meetings to the 'Arbeit Macht Frei ' wing of the Tory Party.. It was pretty well received! You are being deliberately provocative and obnoxious. Not at all. I am just stating what happened!
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Post by eor on Jan 3, 2024 0:46:50 GMT
Rob Ford predictions: Summary- Farage back as leader of REFUK- 10% vote share Greens 4.5%- might lose Brighton but remain on one seat somewhere else LD- 12%- SNP- Thinks Lab will overtake SNP in Scotland (Westminster) 36% to 33% but gain proportionately more seats with 28 Lab gains off SNP Lab 40.5 Con 28 vote share Overall: Lab: 388 Cons: 156 LD: 64 SNP: 18 Lab majority of 126 The Lib Dems look improbably high (can't see them getting more than about 35) and the SNP improbably low, which tends to make the rest of it doubtful. Still, we can have our own 2024 predictions game and offer up our best guesses. What was the final outcome of the 2023 version I wonder? I think it is mid-table mediocrity for me. pjw1961 I am hoping to have time to tot it up in the next couple of days. Work did stop for the two bank holiday weekends, and those were spent with us both trying to out-nap a two-year-old - with some success thanks to grandparents being delighted to have the opportunity to muck in in the afternoons!
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Post by isa on Jan 3, 2024 0:48:32 GMT
After 25 years working in the finance industry, I joined the Civil Service (MOD) in 2003. Apart from being initially shocked by some of the absurdly archaic working practices, and the incredibly inflated self-importance of some middle managers, I found the experience positive and encouraging.
I can only speak for the MOD rather than the wider Civil Service, but we received annual incremental rises, (subject to satisfactory performance), as well as modest separate performance-related bonuses. Self-advancement by applying for more senior, better-remunerated posts was also encouraged. This all ended abruptly in 2010 when the 'coalition' took over and austerity arrived bigtime. No pay increases worthy of the name until my retirement in 2016, and morale on a slippery slope.
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Post by moby on Jan 3, 2024 6:11:40 GMT
Yes, Dachau and Auschwitz are exactly the right reference points to use for discussing the extent to which public services improved or not in the early part of the 21st century in Britain. Well, they are I suppose if you have a tin ear and a cold heart and are quite happy to trivialise the suffering of the thousands of people who met their deaths in those mass extermination concentration camps. Only a self satisfied pillock inhabiting a smug and complacent world of their own, inoculated from the suffering he so glibly cites, could regularly defile sensible discussion with such inappropriate and lurid allusions. There is nothing trivialising about those references at all - and the tin ears and cold hearts belong to those who fail to see any connection. The public sector over a period of years - even decades - has increasingly relied on exploiting its workers as have care homes throughout the land. They are happy to use slave labour whenever they are able to get away with it - and if allusions to the most extreme examples from the past make others feel uncomfortable, perhaps I have made my point. I suppose everyone is trying to make sense of the world through the lens of their own experience and beliefs and as those experiences grow, everyone’s lens tends to focus on a slightly different version of “truth” in the world – especially for controversial topics like politics, religion etc. Our willingness to believe something is undoubtedly influenced by how much we want and need it to be true. With you I suspect it is your obsessive hatred of Tony Blair that is at work here. This neurosis makes it intolerable for you to credit him with anything positive, so you are compelled to blur the lines in refusing to see a distinction between his Govmt and the Conservatives in relation to working conditions and performance in the Public Sector. In relation to your other 'issue' of continually feeling compelled to draw inappropriate comparisons between the action of the nazi's and what most people would describe as mainstream political events, I offer the following psychological analysis......you seem to be a person who pines for certainty in life because uncertainty is painful to accept. It’s therefore far more comfortable to form a complete narrative about how things work. In a quest to leave no question unanswered, emotion gladly fills the holes left by a lack of information. I think both religious belief and the nazis work for you here. The problem with emotion and passion is they tend to be black or white, with no room for the nuance required to understand most topics. You get a false sense of confidence, and one that’s disguised as absolute truth. In your case perhaps the continual nazi comparisons play a useful role in providing the narrative framework for your certainty?😉
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 3, 2024 6:32:41 GMT
"So yes, while you are right that births are declining they are outnumbered by net immigration which was around 750,000 in a year in the figures I last saw. "
Net immigration includes UK citizens returning to the UK after living abroad and is figure exceeding emigration.
Fewer people are emigrating as some of the main destinations such as Spain, which was until 2016 the most likely destination in the world after Australia for British migrants are now far harder to travel to live because of brexit.
Similarly the burden on working age population increases because unlike destinations such as Australia and the USA where the large majority of those migrating did so for employment opportunities only around half of those travelling to Spain did so the rest were retired.The income threshold for retirees to Spain from out with the European union is more than double that for European union residents and the cost of visas rises from 0 to hundreds of euros with the additional cost of private health care, retired migration has fallen By 80% since 2019. Retiring to Australia or New Zealand or USA is only an option for the very wealthy.
By stealing our freedom of movement a theft enacted mostly by the elderly the elderly have made it more difficult to have a sufficient working population to pay and provide for their care and state retirement pension and made it more difficult for them to escape overseas from the consequences of their actions. The law of unintended consequences from being village idiots.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 3, 2024 6:32:47 GMT
Informative and stark graph highlighting real terms pay growth in the UK. Wages are at the same level as 2006 Also shows how well people did under t h e Labour Government
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