Labour Party/government Watch

[Ralphw2]

I would have benefitted from the universal pensions winter fuel allowance this winter if it hadn't been cut. I certainly won't go cold, except by being too mean to pay the bills. The money would be better spent on my eldest, who will be paying their own heating bill out of the £400 odd a month universal credit in a poorly insulated electrically heated flat.

[kenneal - lagger]

Why should they encourage entitled indigenous people to have children when they can get all the labour that they want from migration? Migrants are much cheaper as they have lower expectations, will work for less and live in lower standard accommodation at much higher densities and lower temperatures. Many also come fully trained for expensive to train jobs: doctors and nurses for example. From an economist's point of view they are ideal citizens.

So government economic policy is probably to let the indigenous population die out and be replaced by more grateful immigrants and minimum child benefit supports that policy.

[Potemkin Villager]

It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine what would happen if non woke folk got their dearest wish and all the immigrants currently living in the UK buggered off somewhere else. One can wonder how the indigenous population would fare, themselves alone, in the sunny uplands of racial purity.

[UndercoverElephant]

It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine what would happen if non woke folk got their dearest wish and all the immigrants currently living in the UK buggered off somewhere else. One can wonder how the indigenous population would fare, themselves alone, in the sunny uplands of racial purity.

Can you imagine any specific problems (apart from the problems all populations have, and always have, such as unequal distribution of power and being governed by the "wrong" people)?

[Potemkin Villager]

Well a few spring to mind.

Health care and the NHS would be decimated. The need to fill many roles in the NHS by immigrant workers is exacerbated by folk trained in the UK moving abroad for better t&cs. Those who have left already cannot be compelled to return so presumably limiting or eliminating the number of workers from abroad would have to be matched at least by not permitting indigenous health workers to emigrate.

Wonder how that would go down especially if things were getting bad in the UK?

One country's emigrants are another country's immigrants.

Agriculture would be hard hit and the possibility of reducing food imports fantasy thinking unless enough indigenous folk are persuaded, one way or another, that they are not too good to get there hands dirty from backbreaking physical work in the field.

I am sure that you have discovered by now that growing even a modest percentage of your own food requires a substantial and often tedious hard labour input.

[UndercoverElephant]

Well a few spring to mind.

Health care and the NHS would be decimated. The need to fill many roles in the NHS by immigrant workers is exacerbated by folk trained in the UK moving abroad for better t&cs. Those who have left already cannot be compelled to return so presumably limiting or eliminating the number of workers from abroad would have to be matched at least by not permitting indigenous health workers to emigrate.

But surely immigration cannot possibly be the best or correct solution to this problem, even if the problem is very real. Surely the solution must be to train those staff in the UK and ensure they are paid enough that they are retained in the UK. This is not rocket science. We should be looking at this problem and asking why this isn't already happening, not importing staff from elsewhere -- especially if the places we are importing them from need them as badly as we do.

Agriculture would be hard hit and the possibility of reducing food imports fantasy thinking unless enough indigenous folk are persuaded, one way or another, that they are not too good to get there hands dirty from backbreaking physical work in the field.

That is another example of the same thing. The only sustainable solution is to re-design the economic system such that it is possible to get the people who are already here to do the jobs that need doing here. The real problem is that this requires paying them enough to make it worth them doing the job, because that would push food prices up to the point that other low-paid workers couldn't afford to eat. There is clearly a major systemic problem here. I think we should be identifying the nature of that systemic problem and working towards a solution. Immigration prevents that from happening by offering a cheap and dirty quick fix which has seriously negative long-term consequences and ultimately isn't sustainable.

I am sure that you have discovered by now that growing even a modest percentage of your own food requires a substantial and often tedious hard labour input.

I am well aware of that, yes. Lifted a lot of spuds today. The charlottes were superb. Marfona were huge, but seriously attacked by what I presume were wireworms. They will mostly end up as food for poultry.

[clv101]

About 10.4 million people or 15% of the UK population are immigrants. They have an outsized economic impact as they tend not to be 5 or 85. Call it 20% of the workforce?

If they all left, the economy impact would be incredible. Immigrant workers play vital roles throughout society, minimum wage care and agricultural workers, business owners and doctors, engineers and scientists. Shrinking the workforce by a fifth would be catastrophic, that's on the scale of Pol Pot's Cambodia and knocking on the doors of Black Death's population losses in some European countries. German WW2 casualties were only some 7% of population.

[UndercoverElephant]

About 10.4 million people or 15% of the UK population are immigrants. They have an outsized economic impact as they tend not to be 5 or 85. Call it 20% of the workforce?

If they all left, the economy impact would be incredible. Immigrant workers play vital roles throughout society, minimum wage care and agricultural workers, business owners and doctors, engineers and scientists. Shrinking the workforce by a fifth would be catastrophic, that's on the scale of Pol Pot's Cambodia and knocking on the doors of Black Death's population losses in some European countries. German WW2 casualties were only some 7% of population.

But that is just an argument in favour of keeping an unsustainable system going for as long possible! It is impossible to just get rid of 10-20% of the workforce, and that is not what I am saying we should do. The problem I have with your argument above, as well as PV's argument, is that you are only looking at the short term when this is quite clearly a long term, systemic problem. To be clear, neither of you have explicitly disagreed with my long-term argument -- you're both just ignoring it in favour of pointing out the short-term practical reality.

What I am saying is that we need to acknowledge that mass immigration and multiculturalism have had serious negative effects, and commit to stopping it from happening in the medium term future. We need commit to turning this particular ocean liner around now, even if it takes 20 years to complete the turn. That is not going to happen if everybody just focuses on the present and systematically ignores the future because it is too politically sensitive to face that reality.

In the end, the only sustainable way to fix this problem is to change the economic system so that these currently low status, low paid jobs are done by people who were born here. Yes, that will mean that food prices will go up and that in turn will mean that wages elsewhere in the economy we also have to go up to accommodate this. Ultimately it requires a complete rethink of money. But that complete rethink of money is coming anyway, because of the limits to growth.

My basic complaint is a double standard. I see no difference between this problem and any other aspect of the limits-to-growth problem. We need to completely redesign the economy, and it seems to me very foolish to ignore the socio-cultural and other effects of immigration during this redesign, especially if the base motivation is a dislike of racists and a desire to make sure they don't get what they want. That is cutting off your country's nose to spite its face.

[clv101]

About 10.4 million people or 15% of the UK population are immigrants. They have an outsized economic impact as they tend not to be 5 or 85. Call it 20% of the workforce?

If they all left, the economy impact would be incredible. Immigrant workers play vital roles throughout society, minimum wage care and agricultural workers, business owners and doctors, engineers and scientists. Shrinking the workforce by a fifth would be catastrophic, that's on the scale of Pol Pot's Cambodia and knocking on the doors of Black Death's population losses in some European countries. German WW2 casualties were only some 7% of population.

But that is just an argument in favour of keeping an unsustainable system going for as long possible! It is impossible to just get rid of 10-20% of the workforce, and that is not what I am saying we should do. The problem I have with your argument above, as well as PV's argument, is that you are only looking at the short term when this is quite clearly a long term, systemic problem. To be clear, neither of you have explicitly disagreed with my long-term argument -- you're both just ignoring it in favour of pointing out the short-term practical reality.

"...keeping an unsustainable system going for as long possible!"

That is the human condition. Everything around us is unsustainable. In the long term civilisation collapses with maybe 90%+ dieoff as we lose technology and energy.

In the short term (few decades) some level of immigration is essential to avoid economic impacts pretty much no one would be happy with. In the long term (50-100 yrs+) it makes bugger all difference if the UK's population is 60 million or 100 million, we're screwed either way.

[mr brightside]

That is the human condition. Everything around us is unsustainable. In the long term civilisation collapses with maybe 90%+ dieoff as we lose technology and energy.

In the short term (few decades) some level of immigration is essential to avoid economic impacts pretty much no one would be happy with. In the long term (50-100 yrs+) it makes bugger all difference if the UK's population is 60 million or 100 million, we're screwed either way.

You're ignoring the scenario that humanity might reverse certain trends enough to redress the balance, but i think that puts you in the same camp as two out of the three authors of LTG anyway; so it's not a bad place to be. I think certain nonlinear changes are possible, but only with the right leadership.

[UndercoverElephant]

"...keeping an unsustainable system going for as long possible!"

That is the human condition. Everything around us is unsustainable. In the long term civilisation collapses with maybe 90%+ dieoff as we lose technology and energy.

I don't agree. Or at least, I don't agree that humans are condemned to remain in this particular condition forever. I think it is at least largely a cultural problem, whereas "the human condition" should properly refer to problems that are inescapably biological.

In the short term (few decades) some level of immigration is essential to avoid economic impacts pretty much no one would be happy with. In the long term (50-100 yrs+) it makes bugger all difference if the UK's population is 60 million or 100 million, we're screwed either way.

But that is just giving up and saying that what we do now doesn't make any difference to the future. You already know that I can't accept that argument, because I am actively engaged in a project designed to educate people that what we do now is actually going to make an enormous difference to the future. Just because all those future possible worlds look terrible from the perspective of (post-)modernity doesn't mean there's no difference between the best of those possibilities and the worst of them.

Small changes now can result in enormous changes later. And the changes which need to happen now are in the realm of ideas. From my perspective, you (and many other deep thinking people, including Ralph and PV) are resisting some of those changes for the wrong reasons. If you were prioritising fixing the ideological problems for the future, then I think you would be forced to move in my direction. "We're screwed either way" is a means of avoiding have to confront this, and I think it is being motivated by political concerns grounded in the pre-collapse world. This is one of the tendencies I am trying to convince people to rid themselves of. We need to change the debate. We need to start with ecological realism, and follow the logic where-ever it goes.

[kenneal - lagger]

Getting the Green Party to realise that they look like idiots for supporting unlimited immigration which is clearly unsustainable. They should be calling for a reduction in immigration and an increase in the support for poor people in their own countries although the people coming here aren't the poor, who can't afford to pay the people traffickers, they are the middle classes who can.

[UndercoverElephant]

Getting the Green Party to realise that they look like idiots for supporting unlimited immigration which is clearly unsustainable. They should be calling for a reduction in immigration and an increase in the support for poor people in their own countries although the people coming here aren't the poor, who can't afford to pay the people traffickers, they are the middle classes who can.

The Green Party are beyond saving, unfortunately. Anybody who is not an idiot, and makes the mistake of joining, is either destined to turn into one, or leave. They are not interested in realism or actual sustainability. They are interested in virtue signalling, and nothing else.

Politically they are a major part of the problem, and have nothing to do with any real solutions.

[Potemkin Villager]

Well a few spring to mind.

Health care and the NHS would be decimated. The need to fill many roles in the NHS by immigrant workers is exacerbated by folk trained in the UK moving abroad for better t&cs. Those who have left already cannot be compelled to return so presumably limiting or eliminating the number of workers from abroad would have to be matched at least by not permitting indigenous health workers to emigrate.

But surely immigration cannot possibly be the best or correct solution to this problem, even if the problem is very real. Surely the solution must be to train those staff in the UK and ensure they are paid enough that they are retained in the UK. This is not rocket science. We should be looking at this problem and asking why this isn't already happening, not importing staff from elsewhere -- especially if the places we are importing them from need them as badly as we do.

Agriculture would be hard hit and the possibility of reducing food imports fantasy thinking unless enough indigenous folk are persuaded, one way or another, that they are not too good to get there hands dirty from backbreaking physical work in the field.

That is another example of the same thing. The only sustainable solution is to re-design the economic system such that it is possible to get the people who are already here to do the jobs that need doing here. The real problem is that this requires paying them enough to make it worth them doing the job, because that would push food prices up to the point that other low-paid workers couldn't afford to eat. There is clearly a major systemic problem here. I think we should be identifying the nature of that systemic problem and working towards a solution. Immigration prevents that from happening by offering a cheap and dirty quick fix which has seriously negative long-term consequences and ultimately isn't sustainable.

I am sure that you have discovered by now that growing even a modest percentage of your own food requires a substantial and often tedious hard labour input.

I am well aware of that, yes. Lifted a lot of spuds today. The charlottes were superb. Marfona were huge, but seriously attacked by what I presume were wireworms. They will mostly end up as food for poultry.

I agree with all the above but none of these issues, and many related, as discussed here ad nauseam, are even the faintest of blips on the political radar. That is the meta problem.

Yes nothing like your own fresh veg.

[Potemkin Villager]

The Green Party are beyond saving, unfortunately. Anybody who is not an idiot, and makes the mistake of joining, is either destined to turn into one, or leave. They are not interested in realism or actual sustainability. They are interested in virtue signalling, and nothing else.

Politically they are a major part of the problem, and have nothing to do with any real solutions.

Would you agree the same could be said of Reform and indeed all political parties? Their offerings are all twinkling with magic pixie dust.

So I wonder where that leaves us..... up smelly poo creek without a propelling implement?