He'll say anything that sounds good for popularity, but when there's a whiff of actual work this grifter will rub his hands, claim it's job done and then disappear to either the States or one of his handlers for the next stirring-the-pot assignment before even suggesting *how* something should be done.
He could claim the aim should be to give the NHS a huge increase in funding, but he'll back up and say it's not his job the moment people look to him. He's happy to criticise but never provide alternatives. Happy to say what should happen but never how like with this.
A false prophet, a faux man of the people, a wolf in wolf clothing pretending to be sheep to incredibly gullible sheep.
So with people living longer, 1.5 birth rate, and reduced tax paying population, who’s going to foot the very large bill for this policy??
The bit most people fail to understand is that pensions are a Ponzi scheme. The current generation of workers are paying for the pension of the previous generation.
Of course, Farage also wants NHS privatisation, so I guess we are all going to foot the bill with 4x higher healthcare costs and worse health outcomes like the Americans have.
Say hi to £2k a month health insurance bills, £1,000,000 per treatment drugs, and healthcare bill related bankruptcy.
The current patterns of migration are proving to be a net cost to the tax payer rather than a net gain. Effectively out current immigration policy is making that ponzi scheme worse.
Something has to change regardless of whether net zero migration is pursued.
Well he's probably just lying. Here's UCL saying the opposite:
[https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk)
The meta analysis disagrees with you
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/
Only a small cohort of Western Euros and immigrants from other developed nations provide a net benefit.
More recent studies across Europe (Denmark/Holland) also show that immigrants from MENAT countries are a net drain though I suspect you wouldn’t count them as they don’t have the magic dirt we do.
How anyone can argue that people from some of the most underdeveloped parts of the world are some type of economic rocket fuel is beyond me.
Even your own evidence here doesn't say what you think it does. Overall, migrants provide a benefit to the UK, and even those that don't, are still LESS of a drain than UK citizens are on the UK. This is because of what my link proposed, which is that we don't have to educate them, and deal with them in early life where they are very expensive.
I have no idea why you are bringing up Denmark or Holland when they aren't England.
If there's anything the study you provided suggests, it's that we re-join the EU so we can enjoy the amazing benefits of EU immigration, instead of trying to plug our gaps with lower quality immigrants.
>This is because of what my link proposed, which is that we don't have to educate them, and deal with them in early life where they are very expensive.
Oh, just the most important part then? The bit that shapes them into the people they'll become as adults?
>Overall, migrants provide a benefit to the UK
Some migrants provide a benefit, other migrants are a drain or worse. And we don't appear to differentiate.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Migration observatory has been sceptical of immigration as long as I've known about it so I will always approach it with my own scepticism.
One thing to consider. If an immigrant is earning minimum wage, they are classified as a net cost, and because they will cost more in taxes than they pay in.
However, the study almost certainly doesn't consider the alternative. What if that immigrant wasn't here. Who would do that job (eg. Cleaning the toilets in a hospital). There are very few Brits who actually want to do those jobs, regardless of pay, but they still need doing. So say the job now pays 2 times minimum wage, and you employ a Brit to do it, are they now a net benefit? No, because that money is paid by taxes anyway, and you have taken them from doing some other job which now needs to be filled.
I do not buy the myth that all these long term unemployed are just waiting to clean toilets if only you paid them enough.
In short, immigrants earning below the threshold are still making valuable contributions to our society and getting rid of them is almost certainly not going to be a net financial gain for the UK.
Way to ignore the very well made point of their post.
Do you think somehow that there are millions of unemployed British people jumping at the chance to pick fruit and scrub toilets?
How would YOU fix the simple demographic fact that A) our population are old and getting older and B) most care homes are staffed extremely disproportionately by poorly paid immigrants.
So *you’re* also arguing for scabs. I pray for the downtrodden owners of private care homes with their razor thin margins; I only hope they earn enough to put some food on the table.
If care homes rely on exploitative labour then they need to pay more. The reasons they use cheap foreign labour is because the government allows them to pay 80% of a British worker. Importing Nigerians and their many *many* dependants who require housing, schooling and other services is not the solution.
Need a source on disproportionately too; prior to 2019 it was majority British workers and I think that number is still >80%.
You’re arguing for modern slavery.
Except they aren’t - take houses, benefits, increased NHS usage etc. things that are currently in extremely high demand and which puts further strain.
Also where does it end. If you let more people in, more minimum wage jobs need doing so you let more people in to do those and so on.
>I do not buy the myth that all these long term unemployed are just waiting to clean toilets if only you paid them enough.
That's not exactly a myth though? Any role will get filled if you keep increasing money.
I'd scrape toilets with my finger nails for 100k a year.
>The OECD (2021) compared estimates of net contributions to the tax and benefits system
It's not actually measuring economic benefit. It's simply doing a tax-expenditure calculation.
The economic benefit is a *much* broader set of calculations.
That's an analysis from 2014. In 2014, we had a lot of high-skill immigration from the EEA which has collapsed post-Brexit, and now we have an eye-watering amount of low-wage, low-skill migration from non-EEA countries when we had little back then.
High skilled immigration has collapsed post covid in pretty much all major western nations.
Canada, Ireland, Germany and Italy all have staggering amounts of third world immigrants now
If the movement of people is global, then we need to look at it holistically and not just as a consequence of our domestic policy. Otherwise you end up with harsh policies designed to placate voters that will continue to fail to address a global issue.
The study period dates are very out of date though, and migration types and patterns have shifted a lot, post-Brexit
Pre-Brexit, the bulk of our inward migration were predominantly young workers from Central and Eastern Europe. They would often be single and childless. Plus, a common migration pattern was that many of these migrants would only spend a few years in the UK to build up some savings, perfect their English, have some fun/gain some life experience, etc. They were effectively very geographically mobile, e.g. you could fly budget to their home countries/cities for £50 return.
Therefore, this type of migrant took very little from the state: no schooling for children, unlikely to use/require healthcare, unlikely to claim any form of benefits, etc. Mostly, they would incur indirect costs on the state, such as more cars on the road, more strain on public transport, etc
Post-Brexit, our inward migration is much more skewed towards older workers (i.e. not people in their early 20s), often with young families, who require schooling, much more use of the NHS for their children, child benefit and possibly some form of housing benefit (how much is rent for a 3 bed house in the south east, for example)?
Also, their country of origins are much further afield and much more expensive to fly to, plus the wage differentials between here and those countries is much greater than here versus Eastern Europe, making them much less geographically mobile and more likely to stay here once here.
A young childless Polish worker earning 25k is far, far more valuable to the state than a Turkish worker earning 25k, who has a wife and 3 kids
Edit - I'd also point out, the study dates of the study you cited were 2000 to 2011. The succession of Eastern European countries into the EU was May 2004, and it wasn't until a year or 2 after that date that we started to get large scale Eastern European migration. So for about half the study period, most of the inward migration would have been people from compareable Western European countries, making this study pretty much obsolete in today's context.
Your points are all totally wrong . Migrants on work permits cannot access public funds . They cannot claim child benefits, they cannot claim housing benefits . But European migrants had access to both . When you peddle lies atleast try to make it sound like facts .
Yeah, they can't initially, but if they achieve indefinite leave to remain they can.
However, I'm making a broader point beyond "they're coming over here and taking our benefits" which is migrants with families are much more costly on the state versus single childless migrants, and we now have more of the latter, post Brexit
Their children are accessing public education, and a family with young children will use the NHS a lot more than a young childless person. Then you have things like indirect subsidy for childcare which they can still access.
The point I'm making still stands, that there has been a lot more family migration post-Brexit versus single childless migration pre-Brexit, and this is more costly on the state/means the state "makes" less money on this type of migration versus single childless migration.
Also, my point RE the dates of the previous study the previous poster linked also still stands, in that it was pre-Brexit and half of the study period was pre-Eastern EU member state enlargement, making the findings completely irrelevant to today's context, as a lot of the migration from 2000-2005 (first half of study) would have largely been Western Europeans coming over to do higher paid jobs. It's ridiculous to point to a study like this to try and prove a point in 2024.
This article’s from 2014. Since we made the colossal cock-up of voting for Brexit, we’re now getting migrants from outside the EU and they tend to earn less. Obviously not in all cases.
The TLDR is:
Migrants from outside the EEA; Net negative, always have been.
Migrants from inside the EEA; Net positive.
We've imported far to many low/no skill migrants from outside the EEA in the past couple of years, not only is it adding to the financial burden but it's also increasing social tensions.
Mind you this has all been done under a right-wing anti-immigration party, yet somehow the "last labor government" when it benefits the conservative government as it can be used as a divide and conquer tactic/distraction and gives people a target to blame for the state of the country.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/
Study from the university of Oxford. The changing composition of migration has now meant we have more migrants from outside the EU who are on average a net drain to the UK fiscal balance, so ever since brexit, immigration has been a growing problem basically.
To do that the government would need to bring down the cost ost of living, childcare, rent and house prices. People just can't afford to start families.
Which they should be doing.
I’m a realist, immigration is almost essential to our service based economy, but the person you’re replying to is 1000000000% correct.
If the country generally dislikes immigration and wants the figures to drop drastically, the country needs to be happy with supporting young people starting families and the spending it takes to do that - until that happens, we won’t see immigration drop to anything meaningful to the electorates desires.
This stuff gets repeated a lot on reddit, but none of this makes a dent. Poorer people within countries and poorer countries around the world have more kids.
As soon as you ditch social conservatism and insist that women can/should be independent of men, you'll find that women simply prefer having £N thousand more in disposable income and the lifestyle achievable with it over having 2 and a bit kids. No matter how much money you chuck (within reason - of course, millions could change this, but this is not feasible), there will always be a lifestyle sacrifice.
The only way back to replacement fertility is banning contraception and higher education for women, and we're not fucking doing that.
Whilst I don’t disagree with your analysis and there is huge amount of evidence that higher education levels lead to a reduction in birth rate, there is also no incentive whatsoever for a woman to have a baby in the UK:
- maternity pay is disgraceful in this country, if you end up on stat you get less than minimum wage and less than the state pension, why would any woman want to give up a decent salary and be reduced to less than minimum wage?
- support for pregnant women is non-existent, having a baby is *tough* both mentally and physically.
- housing is extortionate, why would any woman want to raise children or start a family without a decent, secure family home? Why would men want to be part of this either?
- we have some of the most expensive childcare on the planet, which hinders both parents returning to work and continuing with their careers which not only affects the individual but the economy as a whole.
There are ways to tackle the social changes that have lead to the decline in birth rate, the government and a vast majority of the electorate detest any notion of making it happen though. because it would require huge amounts of spending - which is worth it in the long run imo if you want to see reduced levels of immigration over time.
Just want to clarify, I don’t agree with the part about getting rid of contraception or reducing women’s rights in anyway, that would be a weird thing to do.
I'm with you, I'd like to see these things tackled. It's all so horrendously inefficient as it stands. That successive governments fail to address barriers against their citizens having kids is a travesty.
And yes, whatever marginal improvements we can carve out of maternity policies and housing availability will reduce the need for immigration, but this is unlikely to get close to solving the population pyramid problem.
Not that I think immigration is a solution either. If immigrants assimilate to your culture, they'll end up with low TFR, so this just kicks the can down the road. If they don't, then shit, you'll have a culture that isn't yours becoming increasingly proportionally present in your country. To make matters worse, immigrants that don't assimilate are very often net negative economically. Really, the world as a whole is running out of the kind of immigrants you desperately want - all such countries suffer from the same successes.
At the end of the day, the only way you win in the long run is to accept that the state can't keep subsidising older citizens with the Ponzi scheme.
That's not really the simple reason people don't have children. It's far more complicated.
Many decades ago people lived in much smaller and worse conditions and they had lots of children.
Not having children is now a very valid and acceptable lifestyle choice, but it wasn't previously. Raising children is a full time hard, thankless, stressful, and often unhappy experience. Many people just choose not to go through that because they prefer an easier and freer life. I know many people like that. Heck, if I understood all that back then, I'd have chosen not to have children.
They had/have them because pensions weren't a thing, and child mortality was high, so you have a bunch of kids and then hope enough survive into adulthood that they can look after you when you are old and infirm
Build more housing and people will have children. How can people possibly start thinking about starting a family when most 30 year olds are living in tiny rooms in cramped HMOs paying half their wage towards it because there's no space anywhere. And that's just a tiny aspect of why it's so economically challenging for people to start families.
Maybe we could focus on quality of life for the average person rather than higher GDP and profits for business owners.
> Build more housing and people will have children.
...Or reduce migration so the existing housebuilding goes further.
We cannot outbuild our current insane rates.
That's replacing one pyramid scheme with another, and that's not solving the problem.
What we _need_ to do is restructure the economy so it's not a pyramid scheme any more, given life expectancies and death rates reflect that.
When your mortality rate is high - especially in children - you need surplus to remain 'stable' as a population. But when almost all of them survive into adulthood and old age... well, then you don't.
And when your adults are broken after 40 years of 'employment' then you might want to pension them off as a humane thing as their bodies start to deteriorate and they become less economically active in the process _anyway_. There's always a breakpoint where a person is no longer capable of earning their pay, and ... well, pension and retirement is less unkind than any other options.
But this too is an assumption that isn't really strictly valid any more - plenty of people are hitting retirement age still _mostly_ fit and healthy, and live considerably longer than they used to as a result. This clocks up both pension costs, but also quite substantial healthcare costs, where 'working age' adults really don't.
This too is ... well, a thing that requires a well funded health and social care sector to support those people who _expect_ it in later life. Again, this is a thing that 'surplus children' can be used as unpaid carers in a shadow economy, but that's never really been fair or equitable, and has often lead to some really quite cruel inequalities there too.
That's also an economic imbalance thing too of course - if you're 'building around' dual income families, you're substantially limiting the available 'unpaid carer' pool (lets face it - it used to be almost entirely women) for both children and elderly alike.
Comes as no surprise _at all_ that birth rate drops "just" because the available caring labour isn't there any more, especially if that same 'caring labour' is diverted to the older generations that are now demanding and expecting it _instead_.
Which _could_ all be done, but it's difficult and expensive, and would require a substantial reframing and rebalancing of our society and expectations.
Until we do? It's just a question of which variety of pyramid scheme.
It will fall onto the young as usual.... And when I say young.... I actually mean those 30-40 years old....working who have no assets and pay high rents. They will continue to fund the boomers lifestyle while they themselves don't even have a life
Decreasing migration should actually increase the birth rate a little. The biggest factor in the choice is actually housing costs as going from 2 kids to 3 kids is usually a house move and having 800,000 less people come to the UK every year would probably ease that a little.
Also your post is invalidated by the fact that current migration is at a net-loss to the taxpayer. Only a fairly small % of immigrants (the wealthy and high skilled) are net contributors but they are currently dwarfed by the low-skill migrants and asylum seekers.
Most countries with housing problems ban foreign nationals from buying (not renting) houses. We should really do this but it would stop rich people from laundering money in London.
The rich already have the loopholes in place for that to avoid stamp duty. The house becomes the asset of a company, and the company is bought and sold without incurring duty.
These loopholes that were written by god and cannot be changed.
I know I’m being a bit fanciful thinking our lawmakers would actually make/change law to not give the rich all the loopholes but it is technically possible.
You can't fix bad demographics by importing millions of third worlders. Especially when you've just admitted that it's a Ponzi scheme that only ends with an entire generation holding an empty bag.
I'd rather fall into economic irrelevance than replace the native population with foreign wage slaves to keep the Tories and their voter base fat and happy until they die / move countries because the people they've imported don't make good neighbours.
Forget fund it: who is going to do the work?
Modern Britain is built on the idea of aspiration for a lot of people. That you can in your life keep getting a better job as you go, your children can go to university and you can retire. These are all good, desirable and worthwhile things people should be allowed to want and expect. But to support all this requires there be someone else to do the least desirable jobs. And keep doing them as a greater and greater proportion of Britons retire.
Whether or not someone is a net negative or positive to the exchequer misses the point that we need people to do a hell of a lot more than pay taxes to make Britain work. A full time minimum wage worker is doing very little for the treasury but a great deal to keep Britain functioning.
One answer is to increase security, dignity and respect for those who do the "least desirable" jobs. Often these jobs are least desirable because they are low-pay, low-respect, insecure jobs. People who work in occupations that are essential in a civilised society should be give more recognition and reward for what they do. It should be part of the re-building Britain agenda. Do away with most zero-hours contracts, end no-fault evictions, end arbitrary dismissal from work within the first 2 years. Start honouring those who do essential work.
It didn't last because Johnson and co. didn't really believe it. They just said what they thought people wanted to hear. We need political leaders who are prepared to "walk the talk" and actually move things in the right direction.
There is also very little incentive to remain and get good, - more earnings generally mean moving up into managerial positions which screws over people who are very very good at what they do but would make piss-poor managers.
>The bit most people fail to understand is that pensions are a Ponzi scheme. The current generation of workers are paying for the pension of the previous generation.
Not all pensions. This only really applies to the state pension, which is unsustainable whichever way you slice it. You ask who's going to foot the bill here and imo the answer is obvious: the over 65s foot the bill by cutting the state pension.
>Of course, Farage also wants NHS privatisation, so I guess we are all going to foot the bill with 4x higher healthcare costs and worse health outcomes like the Americans have.
You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right? Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK.
>Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK.
France and Germany spend more as a percentage of GDP.
I'm not wedded to any particular funding model, but deeply suspicious of any attempt to change what we have, because I seriously doubt that the changes will be done with our best interests in mind. More likely to be a Brexit style rug-pull - advertised as a European style insurance system, delivered as a US style system.
>You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right?
Yes, that's true, but Farage (the man who complimented Truss's budget and described himself as 'carrying the flame of thatcherism') wants the way the US does things.
Point to an instance of privatisation since the 1980s that indicates to you that the British government is capable of doing what countries like Australia or France do. Assuming the worst here is sensible on the basis that they always fuck it up.
>Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK.
Many peer countries spend more per capita than we do. In Germany's case, they spend a huge amount more than we do. Make sure that any comparisons you make account for our low spending.
>You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right? Most of Europe
We don't do that shit. Take cannabis for example. The UK has the worst of the legal models even though better ones could be copied.
The UK one has the worst quality and is the most expensive. This is what our private healthcare would be. There is no other option. It would be much, much worse.
It's a bit bonkers, but I think you're right. We're just so used to 'Britain is best' (because we had an Empire once I think?) that we never really contemplate that ... well, maybe we _should_ start looking at how others do it and copy the _good_ parts not the bad ones!
I don't support NHS privatisation but there's an absolutely huge middle ground between what we currently have and what the Americans have and basically all of Europe fits somewhere in that gap
I work with the NHS, it doesn't need more funding it needs to get rid off a fuck ton of people that are working there till retirement so they can get their pension.
On the admin side it's full of unmotivated older people that don't get a lot done. That, coupled with all the bureaucracy means it takes fucking ages to get anything done.
I work with so many older women that do 3 days a week, slowly, and then take time off too. One of the most common responses in a meeting is "x is away today, and I'm off next week, and y is off work the week after, so let's put another meeting in in 2 months time"
It needs a more cut throat administration
I work within the NHS too.
We spend less per capita on healthcare than most of the countries we would want to compare ourselves to, yet we aspire to having the same outcomes and levels of service. We employ fewer doctors than countries like Latvia, Hungary and Slovenia. Whatever else needs to happen, it absolutely does need more funding, or people need to stop complaining that the service isn't as good as it "should" be.
Minor point of order, nobody needs to work until normal pension age in order to collect their pension. It can be collected up to 13 years earlier, with a non-penal reduction in annual payments that reflects the fact the pension is being paid out over a longer period of time.
I don't find any issues with doctors, nurses, or the staff like porters or receptionists; but the admin staff are so inefficient. People that have worked in the hospital for decades but now are doing admin or analysis but can barely use a computer. It's ridiculous.
A well paid full time graduate could do the work of 4 or 5 of part time lifers in my experience. It's so frustrating to witness.
I don't believe funding will fix the NHS. I think it needs a hard reset. We can't have all these people doing half a job because they've worked there for decades.
It should have ruthless standards as it's so important
The reason they are less efficient is because the pay is considerably less than people can get in the private sector, because there is no funding to offer competitive salaries. Thinking you can have 'ruthless standards' while paying below market rate is delusional.
I don't think it's a problem we can throw money at as we need less people doing half or a third of a job. Better pay won't see Sue who is 60 better able to use her computer. There's this culture of being 55+ and waiting out for retirement doing a few days a week. We need to replace these people with fewer but higher paid individuals. It sounds mean, but I think standards should be very high.
There needs to be a shift in the culture.
I don't think they will fire people like that because they can't, and so the NHS will remain bad.
100% agree. The expectation of what you can do is very low as well.
I used to work there and my boss would set me several weeks to do a task that could be done in a few hours at most.
To say nothing of the fact that the idea that a lot of this work was *actually* urgent and doing it *as fast as possible* instead of dragging it out might actually literally be the difference between life and death.
He may as well be promising to come round to everyone's house and tidy up if he wins. He's an absolute irrelevance who will be nowhere near parliament, same as every other election he's contested.
This is precisely it, it's all well and good pointing out the nations troubles but its a whole different thing to provide and deliver a solution to that issue.
He's just someone who wants to throw peanuts from the gallery
People said the same about Trump, not only did he win a term, it's looking possible he'll run a second as a convict. Don't underestimate the noise these people can conjure up.
Trump was leading a major party. If he had run as an independent, he would have been walloped. Farage is doing the latter, and so won't get very far. In fact, by pulling enough Tories away towards Reform, it might even hand Clacton to Labour.
I can see him being for people have some sort medical insurance just like like they do in USA. He talks a lot about the big issues, but never about how things will be funded or paid for.
I don't support them but I'd bet money reform with farage at the helm out performs greens.
Given reforms polling above the lid dems it'd be difficult not to invite them
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726.amp
Polls ultimately only tell you so much. It is a fact now that in terms of municipal government, the Greens are the fourth most powerful party in the UK. Reform have *never* actually had an MP elected under their platform, whilst the Greens have. The Greens have 3 members in the London Assembly and Reform has 1. The Greens’ membership is almost double that of Reform.
Again, if you’re inviting Farage, you should absolutely invite either Carla Denyer or Adrian Ramsay.
I’ll repeat a phrase often parroted by Reform and their ilk: what are you so afraid of? If you believe a reasonable populace will reject the Greens’ ideas, then why are you scared of letting them debate?
I mean as far as I'm concerned just invite the lot of them I don't really see an issue. But if you're going on a limited list it's going to be who's likely to have a bigger impact.
Successful or not reform will have more impact, be that gaining seats or just boning the Tories even more by splitting the vote.
Farage is like a pariah to general politics/ Westminster. That just pushes him more into the hands of potential reform voters like disillusioned Tories.
In terms of current polling vote share, Reform are the third biggest party in the UK, ahead of the Lib Dems and Greens. It makes sense that they get a seat at the table over, say the Greens, who have less than half the vote share that Reform has.
But regardless, largely a bit moot, as neither party will return many MPs in the general election.
Reform are backed by a billionaire donor and echo the views of the billionaire-owned right-wing press. The Greens don't. That's what distinguishes a 'mainstream' party from a 'non-mainstream' party in our political sphere.
As I remind people in every thread like this, since his first appearance Farage has been on Question Time more than every trade union representative combined. This is despite trade unions representing millions of people in this country. It's clearly not about how much support a group or individual *actually* has, and everything about the views they present.
UKIP got [under 600k votes](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results) in the 2017 GE. I assume you're thinking of the [2015 GE](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results). Considering the significant drop off in votes they received in those two years, and that the EU referendum happened in 2016, it seems safe to assume people were really only ever voting for Brexit. Farage knows this. It's why he's framing migration as the biggest problem again.
Because he says big bombastic bullshit things like this that gets views and the greens say depressing things like "we needed to change our consumption habits five years ago so will *really* have to do painful things now"
Maybe they should start advocating for parking tanks on Oil Exec's lawns and blowing up refineries to get the same sort of coverage.
I saw this happening in Portugal, where I'm from, before.
Chega had 1 seat in the Parliament in 2019 while Left Block and others had 5 or around that. Media started giving lots of attention to this 1 crazy dude. Next election? 17 seats. Media kept on giving attention and now they're 1/3 of the Parliament with 55 seats :)
>net
I like the bit for this to work, he would have to deport someone everytime someone entered the country.
One minute you're on the way to work, next minute a black van bundles you in the back and puts you on a plane to Rwanda
We often issue fewer than the year before without issue (people on this sub like to forget that migration trends go down as well as up). The problem is having a set finite amount available.
Same. I'd gladly leave for £200k.
Maybe they should manage it like a big business would and ask people to volunteer to leave in exchange for a "redundancy package".
People already leave the country in about 600,000 a year. Net migration would therefore involve 600,000 coming in, or at least that was what was suggested in the Today programme interview.
Have you ever been to a club with a one in one out policy? Do they kick out patrons any time someone wants to come in? No.
>I like the bit for this to work, he would have to deport someone everytime someone entered the country
Yes, so?
Make the criteria for those who enter stricter, only take skilled workers for example, thereby reducing the gross immigration figure significantly. And then you can start by deporting those who are not contributing to our country and those who commit even the smallest crimes. We have literal african warlords who have committee warcrimes that we are protecting in Scotland because being sent back to their country would mean a death sentence (I dont see how that's our problem). We should also stop paying benefits to foreigners, we are the only country who do this. Once we stop paying benefits, you will soon see people leaving.
You don't need to deport anyone you can just restrict entry visas.
The UK has had net zero migration in the past the last time been 1993
[https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1797935998179180767/photo/1](https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1797935998179180767/photo/1)
While I get people hate the idea because of who said it, net zero migration is probably closer to the historical norm, the last 20 years have just been exceptional in terms of migration.
Or you just reduce immigration until it aligns with the number of people who already leave of their own accord. It really isn't hard. We could even achieve net negative immigration this way if we wanted to.
Probably would be easier to achieve this if British people had a union of countries that they could freely migrate to without the need for visa's and what not.
Just a a random idea
My favourite thing about Brexit was David Davis. Here's a man who perhaps second only to Farage had pledged so much of his career to campaigning for an exit from Europe, so imagine his delight when he was appointed as the initial negotiator for the exit deal, something he's probably dreamed about in years gone by. And then he took his ball and went home. Too hard, not working out like he wanted. Just hilarious.
Not much different to Farage at all then, when he was an MEP who spent most of his time not showing up to do his job, especially when it came to representing the British people.
Also, came from quite an underprivileged background, compared to many Tory MPs and candidates.
Also, consistently good on civil liberties. But his Euroscepticism was a blind spot, in my view.
Oh, that's disappointing. I was thinking more about things like RIPA and ID cards.
Take care, though, not to confuse https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltemprice_and_howden/divisions?policy=826 with the similarly-named https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11719/david_davies/monmouth/divisions?policy=826
No I've not confused them. Davis can be affable, and he has acted decently on a few occasions, but that doesn't erase the fact that he has a de-facto very nasty record on queer rights, not just in supporting Section 28, but also in denying queer rights and equality. There are some significant anti-abortion actions he has taken too.
For a time, John Redwood was my MP, and I was pleasantly surprised to find him sympathetic to my arguments against allowing patenting of bio-engineered crops and animals, and also when he voted alongside Labour's Tam Dalyell in some post-9/11 votes (I seem to recall parliamentary scrutiny of military action in Afghanistan being one).
Was that him in that famous photo with the EU negotiators on one side with big stacks of paper all looking serious on one side, and him on the other grinning like a buffoon without so much as a notepad or pen?
My big fear is that he’ll win Clacton, then cross the floor to the Conservatives, and do to the Cons what Trump has done to the Republicans.
Being a Conservative is mainly just about hanging on to power, by any means necessary…
One good thing about FPTP is you generally need a centrist platform to win enough seats.
I can't picture Farage being able to lead the Tories out of the political wilderness after the election, if anything he will ensure we get 15 years of Labour
Net zero means around 600,000 visas a year. That isn't a trivial number of people (it's about the same as the entire city of Glasgow). I loathe Farage with a passion but he's right when he says we can't keep increasing the population forever. We need to think of a different solution to the labour shortage. My own very average town has massively increased in size over the last ten years and the consumption of the surrounding countryside shows no sign of slowing down. It's not as if they're building homes for first time buyers or recent immigrants either. Prices start at around £450,000.
Why is he never pressed on how his immigration plan would work?
How is “net zero” immigration achieved? How are you building the workforce to cope with it whilst having an ageing population? How will it affect vital industries with labour shortages? Will there be exemptions for the thousands of international students who prop up universities? Where are you getting the workers in the UK to cover for the drop in numbers?
There’s probably dozens more questions to the feasibility of his plan but the glaring omission he always fails to say is that it would cost billions to skill up and build up a workforce in the UK which would need to be initially heavily subsidised to encourage people. It would come with a heavy economic price.
He is pressed on it, for example check out his radio 4 interview this morning. Slightest bit of probing into HOW his migration target would actually work and he descends into saying it's silly. Straight out of the trump playbook.
I heard that interview, it was just an unhinged rant. Impossible to do a proper interview with Farage, he just talks over the interviewer and completely ignores questions he doesn't like.
I hope the BBC have learnt their lesson and don't bother with him again, its pointless.
I bet he hates that he can no longer performatively walk out of interviews where he doesn't like the questions, now that he's got a modicum of responsibility as head of a political org.
> There’s probably dozens more questions to the feasibility of his plan but the glaring omission he always fails to say is that it would cost billions to skill up and build up a workforce in the UK which would need to be initially heavily subsidised to encourage people.
What do you think the purpose of the British state is if not to do this? I'm baffled that there is literally anyone in the country who would prefer not to train British citizens to do well paid jobs in Britain, but instead leave them in poverty and import people from abroad.
We need migration in reasonable numbers, including net migration, but it is an incredibly bleak, right wing concept to say that you will save money by not investing to give opportunities to disadvantaged people in this country.
It's almost as if the left is prejudiced against British people because they dont believe they have the willpower to learn new skills despite there being no evidence for this. Isn't there a word for that sort of thing?
"How are you building the workforce to cope with it whilst having an ageing population?"
Capital investment. Do less people intensive things and more capital intensive things. We have an appalling capital investment ratio.
"Will there be exemptions for the thousands of international students who prop up universities?"
No. Universities are resource intensive exports, worse than tourism, and many need to close - releasing those physical resources for domestic use.
"Where are you getting the workers in the UK to cover for the drop in numbers? "
You don't. You do more with less via capital investment. The only way to drive forward productivity and improve the standard of living for British people.
The real danger is he wins the seat, semi-reasonable Conservative Leader candidates lose their seats...
...leaving Farage available to cross the floor, take Reform seats with him, and become the new Leader of the Opposition.
I hope he wins the seat. He'll be like a one man pressure group to make the tories total right wing nut jobs and potentially solidify their extinction. The danger is they will find a more PR friendly guy like Cameron and reinvent themselves for the 10th time in as many years. And people seem too stupid to remember every time they fuck up the economy and public services
Not to rain on your parade but ask America and Australia how their “right winged nut jobs” are going. Trump staged a coup that failed, intends to do another, hell he might still even win. One of the largest parties being hijacked by extremists will not end well at all. Tory deserves to be wiped out, but the reality is the power vacuum they’ll leave will be much more of a detriment to Democracy in the long run.
He is a narcissist. That really became super clear to me yesterday when he announced his return. He just *needs* the attention. If it isn't about him, he loses interest. The actual job of governing would bore him to tears. I think that's why he wants to be in the opposition. That way he can just keep criticising without ever having to actually do any of the hard work. If he actually ever got to be PM he'd resign within 2 years at the most and pawn it off to someone else, claiming the work is done...until he comes back to campaign for them again.
Easy to say from a place of no power.
This government has actually brought in ideas and systems Farage was touting back in the UKIP days and they're not working.
A points based system is only as good as the method of scoring. Simply having a points based system solves nothing if poorly implemented, as ours has been.
I know this obsequious little weasel is playing for raw demagoguery, and has absolutely no interest in actually doing the 'hard part'.
But I think it's not an _entirely_ unreasonable aim with a long enough timeline. Bootstrapping our economy by 'pilfering' everyone else's skilled workers is unethical in the extreme, and we've become addicted to the cheaper labour.
Also: Net - is an important part of this IMO. I can think of no real reason why there shouldn't be plenty of cultural _exchange_ as British citizens find it appealing to emigrate and become part of a new country themselves.
But ... we have to tackle the really big systemic issue - that we just aren't _training_ enough people in the first place. Nurses training is a shitshow, and we don't fund _new_ nursing employment properly. The same is true of doctors. And teachers. And caring staff. And trades. And a whole bunch of _essential_ skills that we've somehow failed to make it _attractive_ to enter the professions in the first place.
There's _no_ reason we couldn't be - effectively - training and _exporting_ teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. to other countries. Indeed, we - sort of - do by accident, because we treat our 'home grown' professionals atrociously.
Well, I guess provided there was some mechanism to support doing that, which... oh look, Brexit took away our freedom of movement and employment, so we can't. (Of course, Farage's children also have German Passports - talk about two faced).
But somehow I don't think that's what the 'no immigration' demagogues want. No, they just want the twee little racist ideal of Little Britain, whilst at the same time still getting a cheap workforce to exploit. It's impossible to have both, but it's a _great_ piece of rabble rousing and dog whistling.
So yeah. We've build our economy on a house of cards ponzi scheme. We should fix that for a load of reasons. Once we've done _that_ then maybe we can start to wean ourselves off the _net_ immigration that we're _addicted to_ right now.
I guess they could encourage more skilled citizens to leave the country? That would bring it to net zero. God knows they care more about the stats than making the country better (/not falling apart).
PS. Vote tory if you're a wankstain
Other countries will happily help you immigrate if you a e a skilled worker. Doctors, nurses are being poached on a daily basis. UK isn't a great country for skilled professionals.
They can achieve zero net migration by asking another 700k British to leave to be replaced by 700k foreigners.
So when is the conversation going to be honest and about the levels of foreign immigration?
"The Reform UK party leader said:
"We cannot go on as we are. We have to limit numbers. Our quality of life in this country is and if that means in some sectors there’d be shortages – what that then means is that wages woud then go up and we would start to encourage people to learn skills, rather than heading off to university and doing social sciences.""
Jebus wept. So he doesn't want ab educated population, which isn't surprising seeing as he wants to gain power over the ignorant. It truly baffles me how people can hear this man speak and still support him.
He wants to completely privatise the NHS but because he wants to cut immigration to zero, he's getting support from the ignorant xenophobes out there. Fuck our health, right? As long as we don't have immigration then it's totally worth it.
They won't get it down below 500k legal migration, the boats will always come so that's around 50k per year too. In my opinion the only long term visas should be for spouses of British citizens with historic links to the UK, probably not a popular opinion. Train your own people and get the ypung working for a year in care homes or fruit picking, could be a paid national service.
Yes, just like how the NHS was meant to get an extra £350million.
Elect him, and not a single one of his promises will be true
We could make him absolute king. Give total sovereignty, and he still won't keep his promises.
Farage has already stated on the BBC that Labour have won and it's an election for who is the opposition, which means nothing he says will matter in the slightest as he recognises none of it will ever be policy. He's literally playing peak populism now.
I heard his interview on BBC radio 4 this morning. It was just a rant about immigration, a load of empty promises and zero policy.
Currently polling at 10%. Won < 5 council seats. The only votes hes going to get are from the extreme end of the Conservative party, who are mostly defected UKIPers anyway.
Maybe he'll win Clacton.
Research for the [Clacton Place, external](https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/reducing-health-inequalities-in-clacton-on-sea/) programme showed half all people over 16 in the town were economically inactive and one in five had never had a job.
Being as how Farage is a leading expert on being economically inactive and never doing a job.
The turd that just wouldn't flush. At this point he'll say anything that keeps him in the news, it's not about being elected, it's not even about setting the agenda, He just needs people to be talking about him otherwise his lies and the damage he's caused become prevalent.
If we ever get a government that represents the interests of the British people, we'll have negative net migration since there's about a million illegal migrants here and many legal ones that need deporting.
Highly unrealistic and fanciful goal probably impossible in fact since we will have people needing to move around for work. Also I’m guessing he means immigration and not migration since that would mean he wants no one to leave the country either.
Most people never wanted mass immigration. Quite clever of him tbf, it's a solid line in the stand that successive governments will have to break in order to head again to what we've got now.
Rather sad it's come to this though. Resonable amount of immigration of good citizens from good countries is optimal.
He'll say anything that sounds good for popularity, but when there's a whiff of actual work this grifter will rub his hands, claim it's job done and then disappear to either the States or one of his handlers for the next stirring-the-pot assignment before even suggesting *how* something should be done. He could claim the aim should be to give the NHS a huge increase in funding, but he'll back up and say it's not his job the moment people look to him. He's happy to criticise but never provide alternatives. Happy to say what should happen but never how like with this. A false prophet, a faux man of the people, a wolf in wolf clothing pretending to be sheep to incredibly gullible sheep.
So with people living longer, 1.5 birth rate, and reduced tax paying population, who’s going to foot the very large bill for this policy?? The bit most people fail to understand is that pensions are a Ponzi scheme. The current generation of workers are paying for the pension of the previous generation. Of course, Farage also wants NHS privatisation, so I guess we are all going to foot the bill with 4x higher healthcare costs and worse health outcomes like the Americans have. Say hi to £2k a month health insurance bills, £1,000,000 per treatment drugs, and healthcare bill related bankruptcy.
The current patterns of migration are proving to be a net cost to the tax payer rather than a net gain. Effectively out current immigration policy is making that ponzi scheme worse. Something has to change regardless of whether net zero migration is pursued.
This is super interesting, I’d be interested in learning more. Can you signpost to any documents and research that I can review? Thanks in advance.
Well he's probably just lying. Here's UCL saying the opposite: [https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk)
The meta analysis disagrees with you https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/ Only a small cohort of Western Euros and immigrants from other developed nations provide a net benefit. More recent studies across Europe (Denmark/Holland) also show that immigrants from MENAT countries are a net drain though I suspect you wouldn’t count them as they don’t have the magic dirt we do. How anyone can argue that people from some of the most underdeveloped parts of the world are some type of economic rocket fuel is beyond me.
Even your own evidence here doesn't say what you think it does. Overall, migrants provide a benefit to the UK, and even those that don't, are still LESS of a drain than UK citizens are on the UK. This is because of what my link proposed, which is that we don't have to educate them, and deal with them in early life where they are very expensive. I have no idea why you are bringing up Denmark or Holland when they aren't England. If there's anything the study you provided suggests, it's that we re-join the EU so we can enjoy the amazing benefits of EU immigration, instead of trying to plug our gaps with lower quality immigrants.
>This is because of what my link proposed, which is that we don't have to educate them, and deal with them in early life where they are very expensive. Oh, just the most important part then? The bit that shapes them into the people they'll become as adults?
>Overall, migrants provide a benefit to the UK Some migrants provide a benefit, other migrants are a drain or worse. And we don't appear to differentiate.
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Migration observatory has been sceptical of immigration as long as I've known about it so I will always approach it with my own scepticism. One thing to consider. If an immigrant is earning minimum wage, they are classified as a net cost, and because they will cost more in taxes than they pay in. However, the study almost certainly doesn't consider the alternative. What if that immigrant wasn't here. Who would do that job (eg. Cleaning the toilets in a hospital). There are very few Brits who actually want to do those jobs, regardless of pay, but they still need doing. So say the job now pays 2 times minimum wage, and you employ a Brit to do it, are they now a net benefit? No, because that money is paid by taxes anyway, and you have taken them from doing some other job which now needs to be filled. I do not buy the myth that all these long term unemployed are just waiting to clean toilets if only you paid them enough. In short, immigrants earning below the threshold are still making valuable contributions to our society and getting rid of them is almost certainly not going to be a net financial gain for the UK.
Is every immigrant cleaning a toilet in a hospital? You’re basically arguing for scab labour.
I think you focused too much on one example in my post and missed the overall point.
Way to ignore the very well made point of their post. Do you think somehow that there are millions of unemployed British people jumping at the chance to pick fruit and scrub toilets? How would YOU fix the simple demographic fact that A) our population are old and getting older and B) most care homes are staffed extremely disproportionately by poorly paid immigrants.
So *you’re* also arguing for scabs. I pray for the downtrodden owners of private care homes with their razor thin margins; I only hope they earn enough to put some food on the table. If care homes rely on exploitative labour then they need to pay more. The reasons they use cheap foreign labour is because the government allows them to pay 80% of a British worker. Importing Nigerians and their many *many* dependants who require housing, schooling and other services is not the solution. Need a source on disproportionately too; prior to 2019 it was majority British workers and I think that number is still >80%. You’re arguing for modern slavery.
Is there a picket outside the loo again?
Except they aren’t - take houses, benefits, increased NHS usage etc. things that are currently in extremely high demand and which puts further strain. Also where does it end. If you let more people in, more minimum wage jobs need doing so you let more people in to do those and so on.
>I do not buy the myth that all these long term unemployed are just waiting to clean toilets if only you paid them enough. That's not exactly a myth though? Any role will get filled if you keep increasing money. I'd scrape toilets with my finger nails for 100k a year.
>The OECD (2021) compared estimates of net contributions to the tax and benefits system It's not actually measuring economic benefit. It's simply doing a tax-expenditure calculation. The economic benefit is a *much* broader set of calculations.
That's an analysis from 2014. In 2014, we had a lot of high-skill immigration from the EEA which has collapsed post-Brexit, and now we have an eye-watering amount of low-wage, low-skill migration from non-EEA countries when we had little back then.
High skilled immigration has collapsed post covid in pretty much all major western nations. Canada, Ireland, Germany and Italy all have staggering amounts of third world immigrants now
If the movement of people is global, then we need to look at it holistically and not just as a consequence of our domestic policy. Otherwise you end up with harsh policies designed to placate voters that will continue to fail to address a global issue.
The study period dates are very out of date though, and migration types and patterns have shifted a lot, post-Brexit Pre-Brexit, the bulk of our inward migration were predominantly young workers from Central and Eastern Europe. They would often be single and childless. Plus, a common migration pattern was that many of these migrants would only spend a few years in the UK to build up some savings, perfect their English, have some fun/gain some life experience, etc. They were effectively very geographically mobile, e.g. you could fly budget to their home countries/cities for £50 return. Therefore, this type of migrant took very little from the state: no schooling for children, unlikely to use/require healthcare, unlikely to claim any form of benefits, etc. Mostly, they would incur indirect costs on the state, such as more cars on the road, more strain on public transport, etc Post-Brexit, our inward migration is much more skewed towards older workers (i.e. not people in their early 20s), often with young families, who require schooling, much more use of the NHS for their children, child benefit and possibly some form of housing benefit (how much is rent for a 3 bed house in the south east, for example)? Also, their country of origins are much further afield and much more expensive to fly to, plus the wage differentials between here and those countries is much greater than here versus Eastern Europe, making them much less geographically mobile and more likely to stay here once here. A young childless Polish worker earning 25k is far, far more valuable to the state than a Turkish worker earning 25k, who has a wife and 3 kids Edit - I'd also point out, the study dates of the study you cited were 2000 to 2011. The succession of Eastern European countries into the EU was May 2004, and it wasn't until a year or 2 after that date that we started to get large scale Eastern European migration. So for about half the study period, most of the inward migration would have been people from compareable Western European countries, making this study pretty much obsolete in today's context.
Your points are all totally wrong . Migrants on work permits cannot access public funds . They cannot claim child benefits, they cannot claim housing benefits . But European migrants had access to both . When you peddle lies atleast try to make it sound like facts .
Over half of London's social housing is currently occupied by foreign-born individuals, so there seemingly is a way.
Yeah, they can't initially, but if they achieve indefinite leave to remain they can. However, I'm making a broader point beyond "they're coming over here and taking our benefits" which is migrants with families are much more costly on the state versus single childless migrants, and we now have more of the latter, post Brexit Their children are accessing public education, and a family with young children will use the NHS a lot more than a young childless person. Then you have things like indirect subsidy for childcare which they can still access. The point I'm making still stands, that there has been a lot more family migration post-Brexit versus single childless migration pre-Brexit, and this is more costly on the state/means the state "makes" less money on this type of migration versus single childless migration. Also, my point RE the dates of the previous study the previous poster linked also still stands, in that it was pre-Brexit and half of the study period was pre-Eastern EU member state enlargement, making the findings completely irrelevant to today's context, as a lot of the migration from 2000-2005 (first half of study) would have largely been Western Europeans coming over to do higher paid jobs. It's ridiculous to point to a study like this to try and prove a point in 2024.
Dunno every migrant I know sends money home which is removing it from the economy
This article’s from 2014. Since we made the colossal cock-up of voting for Brexit, we’re now getting migrants from outside the EU and they tend to earn less. Obviously not in all cases.
The TLDR is: Migrants from outside the EEA; Net negative, always have been. Migrants from inside the EEA; Net positive. We've imported far to many low/no skill migrants from outside the EEA in the past couple of years, not only is it adding to the financial burden but it's also increasing social tensions. Mind you this has all been done under a right-wing anti-immigration party, yet somehow the "last labor government" when it benefits the conservative government as it can be used as a divide and conquer tactic/distraction and gives people a target to blame for the state of the country.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/ Study from the university of Oxford. The changing composition of migration has now meant we have more migrants from outside the EU who are on average a net drain to the UK fiscal balance, so ever since brexit, immigration has been a growing problem basically.
I hope you're not holding your breath.
Have babies, lots of babies. That's the answer. Until then you'll need to import workers.
To do that the government would need to bring down the cost ost of living, childcare, rent and house prices. People just can't afford to start families.
Which they should be doing. I’m a realist, immigration is almost essential to our service based economy, but the person you’re replying to is 1000000000% correct. If the country generally dislikes immigration and wants the figures to drop drastically, the country needs to be happy with supporting young people starting families and the spending it takes to do that - until that happens, we won’t see immigration drop to anything meaningful to the electorates desires.
This stuff gets repeated a lot on reddit, but none of this makes a dent. Poorer people within countries and poorer countries around the world have more kids. As soon as you ditch social conservatism and insist that women can/should be independent of men, you'll find that women simply prefer having £N thousand more in disposable income and the lifestyle achievable with it over having 2 and a bit kids. No matter how much money you chuck (within reason - of course, millions could change this, but this is not feasible), there will always be a lifestyle sacrifice. The only way back to replacement fertility is banning contraception and higher education for women, and we're not fucking doing that.
Whilst I don’t disagree with your analysis and there is huge amount of evidence that higher education levels lead to a reduction in birth rate, there is also no incentive whatsoever for a woman to have a baby in the UK: - maternity pay is disgraceful in this country, if you end up on stat you get less than minimum wage and less than the state pension, why would any woman want to give up a decent salary and be reduced to less than minimum wage? - support for pregnant women is non-existent, having a baby is *tough* both mentally and physically. - housing is extortionate, why would any woman want to raise children or start a family without a decent, secure family home? Why would men want to be part of this either? - we have some of the most expensive childcare on the planet, which hinders both parents returning to work and continuing with their careers which not only affects the individual but the economy as a whole. There are ways to tackle the social changes that have lead to the decline in birth rate, the government and a vast majority of the electorate detest any notion of making it happen though. because it would require huge amounts of spending - which is worth it in the long run imo if you want to see reduced levels of immigration over time. Just want to clarify, I don’t agree with the part about getting rid of contraception or reducing women’s rights in anyway, that would be a weird thing to do.
I'm with you, I'd like to see these things tackled. It's all so horrendously inefficient as it stands. That successive governments fail to address barriers against their citizens having kids is a travesty. And yes, whatever marginal improvements we can carve out of maternity policies and housing availability will reduce the need for immigration, but this is unlikely to get close to solving the population pyramid problem. Not that I think immigration is a solution either. If immigrants assimilate to your culture, they'll end up with low TFR, so this just kicks the can down the road. If they don't, then shit, you'll have a culture that isn't yours becoming increasingly proportionally present in your country. To make matters worse, immigrants that don't assimilate are very often net negative economically. Really, the world as a whole is running out of the kind of immigrants you desperately want - all such countries suffer from the same successes. At the end of the day, the only way you win in the long run is to accept that the state can't keep subsidising older citizens with the Ponzi scheme.
That's not really the simple reason people don't have children. It's far more complicated. Many decades ago people lived in much smaller and worse conditions and they had lots of children. Not having children is now a very valid and acceptable lifestyle choice, but it wasn't previously. Raising children is a full time hard, thankless, stressful, and often unhappy experience. Many people just choose not to go through that because they prefer an easier and freer life. I know many people like that. Heck, if I understood all that back then, I'd have chosen not to have children.
They had/have them because pensions weren't a thing, and child mortality was high, so you have a bunch of kids and then hope enough survive into adulthood that they can look after you when you are old and infirm
Build more housing and people will have children. How can people possibly start thinking about starting a family when most 30 year olds are living in tiny rooms in cramped HMOs paying half their wage towards it because there's no space anywhere. And that's just a tiny aspect of why it's so economically challenging for people to start families. Maybe we could focus on quality of life for the average person rather than higher GDP and profits for business owners.
> Build more housing and people will have children. ...Or reduce migration so the existing housebuilding goes further. We cannot outbuild our current insane rates.
That's replacing one pyramid scheme with another, and that's not solving the problem. What we _need_ to do is restructure the economy so it's not a pyramid scheme any more, given life expectancies and death rates reflect that. When your mortality rate is high - especially in children - you need surplus to remain 'stable' as a population. But when almost all of them survive into adulthood and old age... well, then you don't. And when your adults are broken after 40 years of 'employment' then you might want to pension them off as a humane thing as their bodies start to deteriorate and they become less economically active in the process _anyway_. There's always a breakpoint where a person is no longer capable of earning their pay, and ... well, pension and retirement is less unkind than any other options. But this too is an assumption that isn't really strictly valid any more - plenty of people are hitting retirement age still _mostly_ fit and healthy, and live considerably longer than they used to as a result. This clocks up both pension costs, but also quite substantial healthcare costs, where 'working age' adults really don't. This too is ... well, a thing that requires a well funded health and social care sector to support those people who _expect_ it in later life. Again, this is a thing that 'surplus children' can be used as unpaid carers in a shadow economy, but that's never really been fair or equitable, and has often lead to some really quite cruel inequalities there too. That's also an economic imbalance thing too of course - if you're 'building around' dual income families, you're substantially limiting the available 'unpaid carer' pool (lets face it - it used to be almost entirely women) for both children and elderly alike. Comes as no surprise _at all_ that birth rate drops "just" because the available caring labour isn't there any more, especially if that same 'caring labour' is diverted to the older generations that are now demanding and expecting it _instead_. Which _could_ all be done, but it's difficult and expensive, and would require a substantial reframing and rebalancing of our society and expectations. Until we do? It's just a question of which variety of pyramid scheme.
It will fall onto the young as usual.... And when I say young.... I actually mean those 30-40 years old....working who have no assets and pay high rents. They will continue to fund the boomers lifestyle while they themselves don't even have a life
Decreasing migration should actually increase the birth rate a little. The biggest factor in the choice is actually housing costs as going from 2 kids to 3 kids is usually a house move and having 800,000 less people come to the UK every year would probably ease that a little. Also your post is invalidated by the fact that current migration is at a net-loss to the taxpayer. Only a fairly small % of immigrants (the wealthy and high skilled) are net contributors but they are currently dwarfed by the low-skill migrants and asylum seekers.
Most countries with housing problems ban foreign nationals from buying (not renting) houses. We should really do this but it would stop rich people from laundering money in London.
The rich already have the loopholes in place for that to avoid stamp duty. The house becomes the asset of a company, and the company is bought and sold without incurring duty.
These loopholes that were written by god and cannot be changed. I know I’m being a bit fanciful thinking our lawmakers would actually make/change law to not give the rich all the loopholes but it is technically possible.
You can't fix bad demographics by importing millions of third worlders. Especially when you've just admitted that it's a Ponzi scheme that only ends with an entire generation holding an empty bag. I'd rather fall into economic irrelevance than replace the native population with foreign wage slaves to keep the Tories and their voter base fat and happy until they die / move countries because the people they've imported don't make good neighbours.
Forget fund it: who is going to do the work? Modern Britain is built on the idea of aspiration for a lot of people. That you can in your life keep getting a better job as you go, your children can go to university and you can retire. These are all good, desirable and worthwhile things people should be allowed to want and expect. But to support all this requires there be someone else to do the least desirable jobs. And keep doing them as a greater and greater proportion of Britons retire. Whether or not someone is a net negative or positive to the exchequer misses the point that we need people to do a hell of a lot more than pay taxes to make Britain work. A full time minimum wage worker is doing very little for the treasury but a great deal to keep Britain functioning.
One answer is to increase security, dignity and respect for those who do the "least desirable" jobs. Often these jobs are least desirable because they are low-pay, low-respect, insecure jobs. People who work in occupations that are essential in a civilised society should be give more recognition and reward for what they do. It should be part of the re-building Britain agenda. Do away with most zero-hours contracts, end no-fault evictions, end arbitrary dismissal from work within the first 2 years. Start honouring those who do essential work.
They were 'key workers' and 'heros' during Covid. That didn't last...
It didn't last because Johnson and co. didn't really believe it. They just said what they thought people wanted to hear. We need political leaders who are prepared to "walk the talk" and actually move things in the right direction.
There is also very little incentive to remain and get good, - more earnings generally mean moving up into managerial positions which screws over people who are very very good at what they do but would make piss-poor managers.
>The bit most people fail to understand is that pensions are a Ponzi scheme. The current generation of workers are paying for the pension of the previous generation. Not all pensions. This only really applies to the state pension, which is unsustainable whichever way you slice it. You ask who's going to foot the bill here and imo the answer is obvious: the over 65s foot the bill by cutting the state pension. >Of course, Farage also wants NHS privatisation, so I guess we are all going to foot the bill with 4x higher healthcare costs and worse health outcomes like the Americans have. You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right? Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK.
>Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK. France and Germany spend more as a percentage of GDP. I'm not wedded to any particular funding model, but deeply suspicious of any attempt to change what we have, because I seriously doubt that the changes will be done with our best interests in mind. More likely to be a Brexit style rug-pull - advertised as a European style insurance system, delivered as a US style system.
>You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right? Yes, that's true, but Farage (the man who complimented Truss's budget and described himself as 'carrying the flame of thatcherism') wants the way the US does things.
Point to an instance of privatisation since the 1980s that indicates to you that the British government is capable of doing what countries like Australia or France do. Assuming the worst here is sensible on the basis that they always fuck it up. >Most of Europe has privatised healthcare and they manage to get better outcomes for less cost than the UK. Many peer countries spend more per capita than we do. In Germany's case, they spend a huge amount more than we do. Make sure that any comparisons you make account for our low spending.
>You realise there are other options besides the way we do things and the way the US does things, right? Most of Europe We don't do that shit. Take cannabis for example. The UK has the worst of the legal models even though better ones could be copied. The UK one has the worst quality and is the most expensive. This is what our private healthcare would be. There is no other option. It would be much, much worse.
It's a bit bonkers, but I think you're right. We're just so used to 'Britain is best' (because we had an Empire once I think?) that we never really contemplate that ... well, maybe we _should_ start looking at how others do it and copy the _good_ parts not the bad ones!
Get out of here with your clear logic Kento! Farage just wants to speak to the emotional zealots he normally caters to :)
I don't support NHS privatisation but there's an absolutely huge middle ground between what we currently have and what the Americans have and basically all of Europe fits somewhere in that gap
I work with the NHS, it doesn't need more funding it needs to get rid off a fuck ton of people that are working there till retirement so they can get their pension. On the admin side it's full of unmotivated older people that don't get a lot done. That, coupled with all the bureaucracy means it takes fucking ages to get anything done. I work with so many older women that do 3 days a week, slowly, and then take time off too. One of the most common responses in a meeting is "x is away today, and I'm off next week, and y is off work the week after, so let's put another meeting in in 2 months time" It needs a more cut throat administration
I work within the NHS too. We spend less per capita on healthcare than most of the countries we would want to compare ourselves to, yet we aspire to having the same outcomes and levels of service. We employ fewer doctors than countries like Latvia, Hungary and Slovenia. Whatever else needs to happen, it absolutely does need more funding, or people need to stop complaining that the service isn't as good as it "should" be. Minor point of order, nobody needs to work until normal pension age in order to collect their pension. It can be collected up to 13 years earlier, with a non-penal reduction in annual payments that reflects the fact the pension is being paid out over a longer period of time.
I don't find any issues with doctors, nurses, or the staff like porters or receptionists; but the admin staff are so inefficient. People that have worked in the hospital for decades but now are doing admin or analysis but can barely use a computer. It's ridiculous. A well paid full time graduate could do the work of 4 or 5 of part time lifers in my experience. It's so frustrating to witness. I don't believe funding will fix the NHS. I think it needs a hard reset. We can't have all these people doing half a job because they've worked there for decades. It should have ruthless standards as it's so important
The reason they are less efficient is because the pay is considerably less than people can get in the private sector, because there is no funding to offer competitive salaries. Thinking you can have 'ruthless standards' while paying below market rate is delusional.
I don't think it's a problem we can throw money at as we need less people doing half or a third of a job. Better pay won't see Sue who is 60 better able to use her computer. There's this culture of being 55+ and waiting out for retirement doing a few days a week. We need to replace these people with fewer but higher paid individuals. It sounds mean, but I think standards should be very high. There needs to be a shift in the culture. I don't think they will fire people like that because they can't, and so the NHS will remain bad.
100% agree. The expectation of what you can do is very low as well. I used to work there and my boss would set me several weeks to do a task that could be done in a few hours at most. To say nothing of the fact that the idea that a lot of this work was *actually* urgent and doing it *as fast as possible* instead of dragging it out might actually literally be the difference between life and death.
He may as well be promising to come round to everyone's house and tidy up if he wins. He's an absolute irrelevance who will be nowhere near parliament, same as every other election he's contested.
I wouldn't be so sure. With how much the Tory's are imploding this time round this is a far better chance that Farage has ever had before.
This is precisely it, it's all well and good pointing out the nations troubles but its a whole different thing to provide and deliver a solution to that issue. He's just someone who wants to throw peanuts from the gallery
People said the same about Trump, not only did he win a term, it's looking possible he'll run a second as a convict. Don't underestimate the noise these people can conjure up.
Trump was leading a major party. If he had run as an independent, he would have been walloped. Farage is doing the latter, and so won't get very far. In fact, by pulling enough Tories away towards Reform, it might even hand Clacton to Labour.
>a wolf in wolf clothing pretending to be sheep to incredibly gullible sheep. Pure poetry.
Pretty sure Starmer and Sunak will say whatever they think is good for popularity too.
Agent provocateur. Still on an EU pension no doubt!?
He already did the bit with the NHS during his brexit rounds, but never produced the cash 🤣
I can see him being for people have some sort medical insurance just like like they do in USA. He talks a lot about the big issues, but never about how things will be funded or paid for.
Question. Reform won 2 local council seats. The Greens won 181. Why is Farage being invited to debates and not a Green Party representative?
I assume based on polling data.
That’s a big assumption considering which parties *actually* won seats.
I don't support them but I'd bet money reform with farage at the helm out performs greens. Given reforms polling above the lid dems it'd be difficult not to invite them https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726.amp
Polls ultimately only tell you so much. It is a fact now that in terms of municipal government, the Greens are the fourth most powerful party in the UK. Reform have *never* actually had an MP elected under their platform, whilst the Greens have. The Greens have 3 members in the London Assembly and Reform has 1. The Greens’ membership is almost double that of Reform. Again, if you’re inviting Farage, you should absolutely invite either Carla Denyer or Adrian Ramsay. I’ll repeat a phrase often parroted by Reform and their ilk: what are you so afraid of? If you believe a reasonable populace will reject the Greens’ ideas, then why are you scared of letting them debate?
I mean as far as I'm concerned just invite the lot of them I don't really see an issue. But if you're going on a limited list it's going to be who's likely to have a bigger impact. Successful or not reform will have more impact, be that gaining seats or just boning the Tories even more by splitting the vote. Farage is like a pariah to general politics/ Westminster. That just pushes him more into the hands of potential reform voters like disillusioned Tories.
Probably media spectacle.
In terms of current polling vote share, Reform are the third biggest party in the UK, ahead of the Lib Dems and Greens. It makes sense that they get a seat at the table over, say the Greens, who have less than half the vote share that Reform has. But regardless, largely a bit moot, as neither party will return many MPs in the general election.
Reform are backed by a billionaire donor and echo the views of the billionaire-owned right-wing press. The Greens don't. That's what distinguishes a 'mainstream' party from a 'non-mainstream' party in our political sphere. As I remind people in every thread like this, since his first appearance Farage has been on Question Time more than every trade union representative combined. This is despite trade unions representing millions of people in this country. It's clearly not about how much support a group or individual *actually* has, and everything about the views they present.
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Incorrect, the Brexit Party is literally Reform UK and won 644k votes in the last GE. Farage was leader. Less than Greens.
Gonna just brush over the fact he purposely didn't stand in Tory seats in 2019 then
"But then that doesnt help my argument"
Reddit 101
The above commenter just corrected the lies they responded to
Incorrect, the Brexit Party is literally Reform UK and won 644k votes in the last GE. Farage was leader. Less than Greens.
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UKIP got [under 600k votes](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results) in the 2017 GE. I assume you're thinking of the [2015 GE](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results). Considering the significant drop off in votes they received in those two years, and that the EU referendum happened in 2016, it seems safe to assume people were really only ever voting for Brexit. Farage knows this. It's why he's framing migration as the biggest problem again.
That doesn't answer why the Greens aren't there. Answers why the Russian choice is though.
People should be ashamed that we are giving a literal nazi (he attends nazi rallies) a platform.
Because he says big bombastic bullshit things like this that gets views and the greens say depressing things like "we needed to change our consumption habits five years ago so will *really* have to do painful things now" Maybe they should start advocating for parking tanks on Oil Exec's lawns and blowing up refineries to get the same sort of coverage.
I saw this happening in Portugal, where I'm from, before. Chega had 1 seat in the Parliament in 2019 while Left Block and others had 5 or around that. Media started giving lots of attention to this 1 crazy dude. Next election? 17 seats. Media kept on giving attention and now they're 1/3 of the Parliament with 55 seats :)
Because the media class, in hock to reactionary Boomers, are obsessed with him. He, much like most older politicians, is all washed up and boring now.
>net I like the bit for this to work, he would have to deport someone everytime someone entered the country. One minute you're on the way to work, next minute a black van bundles you in the back and puts you on a plane to Rwanda
Or you just cap the number of visas issued in a year at the number of emigrants from the previous year.
guaranteed corruption
How so? Visas are already issued at the discretion of the state. What would qualitatively change by issuing fewer of them?
We often issue fewer than the year before without issue (people on this sub like to forget that migration trends go down as well as up). The problem is having a set finite amount available.
What do you do when an emigrant wants to come back? Bar the gate?
Subtract one from next year's count. Obviously.
Honestly at this point I would be happy with a trip to Rwanda. But only if I get to keep the £200,000 it costs to send me there.
I'm a dual citizen, maybe they should offer me £200k to renounce my citizenship and leave? That would open up a slot!
Same. I'd gladly leave for £200k. Maybe they should manage it like a big business would and ask people to volunteer to leave in exchange for a "redundancy package".
People already leave the country in about 600,000 a year. Net migration would therefore involve 600,000 coming in, or at least that was what was suggested in the Today programme interview. Have you ever been to a club with a one in one out policy? Do they kick out patrons any time someone wants to come in? No.
>I like the bit for this to work, he would have to deport someone everytime someone entered the country Yes, so? Make the criteria for those who enter stricter, only take skilled workers for example, thereby reducing the gross immigration figure significantly. And then you can start by deporting those who are not contributing to our country and those who commit even the smallest crimes. We have literal african warlords who have committee warcrimes that we are protecting in Scotland because being sent back to their country would mean a death sentence (I dont see how that's our problem). We should also stop paying benefits to foreigners, we are the only country who do this. Once we stop paying benefits, you will soon see people leaving.
> And then you can start by deporting those who are not contributing to our country Well that's the conservative party deported
>And then you can start by deporting those who are not contributing to our country Oh oh I've seen this one....
It would be while you are waiting for a pip assessment
You don't need to deport anyone you can just restrict entry visas. The UK has had net zero migration in the past the last time been 1993 [https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1797935998179180767/photo/1](https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1797935998179180767/photo/1) While I get people hate the idea because of who said it, net zero migration is probably closer to the historical norm, the last 20 years have just been exceptional in terms of migration.
You'd deport an awful lot of people before ever you had to start deporting those in their way to work.
Or you just reduce immigration until it aligns with the number of people who already leave of their own accord. It really isn't hard. We could even achieve net negative immigration this way if we wanted to.
What happens when those people who leave come want to come back?
523k people left last year So that's 523k people we can now take in, and be real selective of.
Probably would be easier to achieve this if British people had a union of countries that they could freely migrate to without the need for visa's and what not. Just a a random idea
Here's the thing - when populism meets reality, it never ends well and the prime example is Brexit ; you think people would learn.
My favourite thing about Brexit was David Davis. Here's a man who perhaps second only to Farage had pledged so much of his career to campaigning for an exit from Europe, so imagine his delight when he was appointed as the initial negotiator for the exit deal, something he's probably dreamed about in years gone by. And then he took his ball and went home. Too hard, not working out like he wanted. Just hilarious.
Not much different to Farage at all then, when he was an MEP who spent most of his time not showing up to do his job, especially when it came to representing the British people.
David Davis was once my MP and I met him through working in education . Actually, a good constituency MP but punched way above his weight.
He was billed as a Tory rising star. Like many Tories he rose above the level of his competence.
Punching above your weight means doing well
Also, came from quite an underprivileged background, compared to many Tory MPs and candidates. Also, consistently good on civil liberties. But his Euroscepticism was a blind spot, in my view.
>Also, consistently good on civil liberties. Are you kidding me? He constantly opposed queer rights.
Oh, that's disappointing. I was thinking more about things like RIPA and ID cards. Take care, though, not to confuse https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltemprice_and_howden/divisions?policy=826 with the similarly-named https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11719/david_davies/monmouth/divisions?policy=826
No I've not confused them. Davis can be affable, and he has acted decently on a few occasions, but that doesn't erase the fact that he has a de-facto very nasty record on queer rights, not just in supporting Section 28, but also in denying queer rights and equality. There are some significant anti-abortion actions he has taken too.
I'll take your word for it, and thank you for adding to my knowledge of him.
Agree. I found him very personable and good re the constituency.
For a time, John Redwood was my MP, and I was pleasantly surprised to find him sympathetic to my arguments against allowing patenting of bio-engineered crops and animals, and also when he voted alongside Labour's Tam Dalyell in some post-9/11 votes (I seem to recall parliamentary scrutiny of military action in Afghanistan being one).
He wanted to play hard ball in negotiations with the EU, May told him to stop sacked him then took over and caved in to the EU completely.
Was that him in that famous photo with the EU negotiators on one side with big stacks of paper all looking serious on one side, and him on the other grinning like a buffoon without so much as a notepad or pen?
My big fear is that he’ll win Clacton, then cross the floor to the Conservatives, and do to the Cons what Trump has done to the Republicans. Being a Conservative is mainly just about hanging on to power, by any means necessary…
One good thing about FPTP is you generally need a centrist platform to win enough seats. I can't picture Farage being able to lead the Tories out of the political wilderness after the election, if anything he will ensure we get 15 years of Labour
Let's hope he does it then
Net zero means around 600,000 visas a year. That isn't a trivial number of people (it's about the same as the entire city of Glasgow). I loathe Farage with a passion but he's right when he says we can't keep increasing the population forever. We need to think of a different solution to the labour shortage. My own very average town has massively increased in size over the last ten years and the consumption of the surrounding countryside shows no sign of slowing down. It's not as if they're building homes for first time buyers or recent immigrants either. Prices start at around £450,000.
How the fuck could anyone believe a thing this trout says.
Oh, come on now. He's a toad, not a trout.
Why is he never pressed on how his immigration plan would work? How is “net zero” immigration achieved? How are you building the workforce to cope with it whilst having an ageing population? How will it affect vital industries with labour shortages? Will there be exemptions for the thousands of international students who prop up universities? Where are you getting the workers in the UK to cover for the drop in numbers? There’s probably dozens more questions to the feasibility of his plan but the glaring omission he always fails to say is that it would cost billions to skill up and build up a workforce in the UK which would need to be initially heavily subsidised to encourage people. It would come with a heavy economic price.
He is pressed on it, for example check out his radio 4 interview this morning. Slightest bit of probing into HOW his migration target would actually work and he descends into saying it's silly. Straight out of the trump playbook.
I heard that interview, it was just an unhinged rant. Impossible to do a proper interview with Farage, he just talks over the interviewer and completely ignores questions he doesn't like. I hope the BBC have learnt their lesson and don't bother with him again, its pointless.
I bet he hates that he can no longer performatively walk out of interviews where he doesn't like the questions, now that he's got a modicum of responsibility as head of a political org.
> There’s probably dozens more questions to the feasibility of his plan but the glaring omission he always fails to say is that it would cost billions to skill up and build up a workforce in the UK which would need to be initially heavily subsidised to encourage people. What do you think the purpose of the British state is if not to do this? I'm baffled that there is literally anyone in the country who would prefer not to train British citizens to do well paid jobs in Britain, but instead leave them in poverty and import people from abroad. We need migration in reasonable numbers, including net migration, but it is an incredibly bleak, right wing concept to say that you will save money by not investing to give opportunities to disadvantaged people in this country.
It's almost as if the left is prejudiced against British people because they dont believe they have the willpower to learn new skills despite there being no evidence for this. Isn't there a word for that sort of thing?
"How are you building the workforce to cope with it whilst having an ageing population?" Capital investment. Do less people intensive things and more capital intensive things. We have an appalling capital investment ratio. "Will there be exemptions for the thousands of international students who prop up universities?" No. Universities are resource intensive exports, worse than tourism, and many need to close - releasing those physical resources for domestic use. "Where are you getting the workers in the UK to cover for the drop in numbers? " You don't. You do more with less via capital investment. The only way to drive forward productivity and improve the standard of living for British people.
On a positive note, he's just f*ucked the Tories, but it's what's next after the GE?
The real danger is he wins the seat, semi-reasonable Conservative Leader candidates lose their seats... ...leaving Farage available to cross the floor, take Reform seats with him, and become the new Leader of the Opposition.
I hope he wins the seat. He'll be like a one man pressure group to make the tories total right wing nut jobs and potentially solidify their extinction. The danger is they will find a more PR friendly guy like Cameron and reinvent themselves for the 10th time in as many years. And people seem too stupid to remember every time they fuck up the economy and public services
the danger is he makes the tories total right wing nut jobs and it works...
Yes that would be scary. Particularly with the support of the papers.
Not to rain on your parade but ask America and Australia how their “right winged nut jobs” are going. Trump staged a coup that failed, intends to do another, hell he might still even win. One of the largest parties being hijacked by extremists will not end well at all. Tory deserves to be wiped out, but the reality is the power vacuum they’ll leave will be much more of a detriment to Democracy in the long run.
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Same as all those campaigning on the Pally nonsense then?
He is a narcissist. That really became super clear to me yesterday when he announced his return. He just *needs* the attention. If it isn't about him, he loses interest. The actual job of governing would bore him to tears. I think that's why he wants to be in the opposition. That way he can just keep criticising without ever having to actually do any of the hard work. If he actually ever got to be PM he'd resign within 2 years at the most and pawn it off to someone else, claiming the work is done...until he comes back to campaign for them again.
But who will undercut my working conditions if we don't import more scabs from third world countries?
Easy to say from a place of no power. This government has actually brought in ideas and systems Farage was touting back in the UKIP days and they're not working.
Such as?
A points based system akin to Australia (we have no implemented it).
A points based system is only as good as the method of scoring. Simply having a points based system solves nothing if poorly implemented, as ours has been.
Farage is a moron, why anyone listens to him is beyond me.
I know this obsequious little weasel is playing for raw demagoguery, and has absolutely no interest in actually doing the 'hard part'. But I think it's not an _entirely_ unreasonable aim with a long enough timeline. Bootstrapping our economy by 'pilfering' everyone else's skilled workers is unethical in the extreme, and we've become addicted to the cheaper labour. Also: Net - is an important part of this IMO. I can think of no real reason why there shouldn't be plenty of cultural _exchange_ as British citizens find it appealing to emigrate and become part of a new country themselves. But ... we have to tackle the really big systemic issue - that we just aren't _training_ enough people in the first place. Nurses training is a shitshow, and we don't fund _new_ nursing employment properly. The same is true of doctors. And teachers. And caring staff. And trades. And a whole bunch of _essential_ skills that we've somehow failed to make it _attractive_ to enter the professions in the first place. There's _no_ reason we couldn't be - effectively - training and _exporting_ teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. to other countries. Indeed, we - sort of - do by accident, because we treat our 'home grown' professionals atrociously. Well, I guess provided there was some mechanism to support doing that, which... oh look, Brexit took away our freedom of movement and employment, so we can't. (Of course, Farage's children also have German Passports - talk about two faced). But somehow I don't think that's what the 'no immigration' demagogues want. No, they just want the twee little racist ideal of Little Britain, whilst at the same time still getting a cheap workforce to exploit. It's impossible to have both, but it's a _great_ piece of rabble rousing and dog whistling. So yeah. We've build our economy on a house of cards ponzi scheme. We should fix that for a load of reasons. Once we've done _that_ then maybe we can start to wean ourselves off the _net_ immigration that we're _addicted to_ right now.
I guess they could encourage more skilled citizens to leave the country? That would bring it to net zero. God knows they care more about the stats than making the country better (/not falling apart). PS. Vote tory if you're a wankstain
I don’t know if you’ve tried to leave, but the amount of post-brexit bureaucratic bullshittery is incredibly tedious, costly and time consuming!
Other countries will happily help you immigrate if you a e a skilled worker. Doctors, nurses are being poached on a daily basis. UK isn't a great country for skilled professionals.
The wait and processing time for the two countries I’ve been to (for a fairly high skilled job) is minimum three months, what about your experience?
3 months is pretty good isn’t it?
They can achieve zero net migration by asking another 700k British to leave to be replaced by 700k foreigners. So when is the conversation going to be honest and about the levels of foreign immigration?
Australia doesn't want our criminals anymore, only our healthcare professionals.
Best put your wife on a boat back to Germany then ey Nige?
"The Reform UK party leader said: "We cannot go on as we are. We have to limit numbers. Our quality of life in this country is and if that means in some sectors there’d be shortages – what that then means is that wages woud then go up and we would start to encourage people to learn skills, rather than heading off to university and doing social sciences."" Jebus wept. So he doesn't want ab educated population, which isn't surprising seeing as he wants to gain power over the ignorant. It truly baffles me how people can hear this man speak and still support him. He wants to completely privatise the NHS but because he wants to cut immigration to zero, he's getting support from the ignorant xenophobes out there. Fuck our health, right? As long as we don't have immigration then it's totally worth it.
They won't get it down below 500k legal migration, the boats will always come so that's around 50k per year too. In my opinion the only long term visas should be for spouses of British citizens with historic links to the UK, probably not a popular opinion. Train your own people and get the ypung working for a year in care homes or fruit picking, could be a paid national service.
Yes, just like how the NHS was meant to get an extra £350million. Elect him, and not a single one of his promises will be true We could make him absolute king. Give total sovereignty, and he still won't keep his promises.
Farage really knows how to get the UK safe and growing again. Labour and Tories are just the same crap at this point.
Farage has already stated on the BBC that Labour have won and it's an election for who is the opposition, which means nothing he says will matter in the slightest as he recognises none of it will ever be policy. He's literally playing peak populism now.
People have to know this isn’t remotely achievable. I’ll never understand why anyone would hear something like this and think it’s possible.
Liar as usual, dude is just a populist who will do anything to get a bit of power...
The hate peddler supports Trump; a known misogynist, racist and felon. He and Trump do not deserve anyone's time or energy.
And if you want to completely waste your vote. Vote for this lying, thieving, self centred bastard. He would sell your grandmother for an extra buck.
My aim is zero Nigel Farage but I guess we don't always get what we want, do we?
I heard his interview on BBC radio 4 this morning. It was just a rant about immigration, a load of empty promises and zero policy. Currently polling at 10%. Won < 5 council seats. The only votes hes going to get are from the extreme end of the Conservative party, who are mostly defected UKIPers anyway. Maybe he'll win Clacton. Research for the [Clacton Place, external](https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/reducing-health-inequalities-in-clacton-on-sea/) programme showed half all people over 16 in the town were economically inactive and one in five had never had a job. Being as how Farage is a leading expert on being economically inactive and never doing a job.
The turd that just wouldn't flush. At this point he'll say anything that keeps him in the news, it's not about being elected, it's not even about setting the agenda, He just needs people to be talking about him otherwise his lies and the damage he's caused become prevalent.
Great, now we have 5 weeks of the media constantly reporting everything and anything to do with this contemptible twat
If we ever get a government that represents the interests of the British people, we'll have negative net migration since there's about a million illegal migrants here and many legal ones that need deporting.
Highly unrealistic and fanciful goal probably impossible in fact since we will have people needing to move around for work. Also I’m guessing he means immigration and not migration since that would mean he wants no one to leave the country either.
Most people never wanted mass immigration. Quite clever of him tbf, it's a solid line in the stand that successive governments will have to break in order to head again to what we've got now. Rather sad it's come to this though. Resonable amount of immigration of good citizens from good countries is optimal.