General Election 2024: General UK Politics Discussion here

[hackey lad]

I’m not a gambling man but could anyone tell me the odds on Sir Starmer not lasting two years. I could be tempted.

[cressida]

Just now, hackey lad said:

I’m not a gambling man but could anyone tell me the odds on Sir Starmer not lasting two years. I could be tempted.

Have to admit he looks the part of P.M.  not sure of the rest of his male rivals they are still 'corked'

[Padders]

12 minutes ago, hackey lad said:

I’m not a gambling man but could anyone tell me the odds on Sir Starmer not lasting two years. I could be tempted.

I'm tempted to bet you a shilling he is...

[alchresearch]

An interesting article and a point that often gets overlooked.

 

You can vote out a political party for lying, cheating, and general incompetence. 

 

But you can't vote out the people who really run the country - civil servants

 

Home Office criticised over ‘woefully’ understated Tory asylum budgets

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/29/home-office-criticised-over-woefully-understated-tory-asylum-budgets

[RJRB]

2 hours ago, leviathan13 said:

I believe it's slightly perverse this lefty 'need' for immigration to fill employment holes. Whilst most of us would probably prefer those unemployed UK citizens to get off their backsides and find jobs so there isn't a need for immigrants, you want immigrants to come and pay tax to support the benefits for unemployed Brits.

 

With the Tories attempting to try and sort the immigration issue - maybe they might have had more success if the other side hadn't called them racist or xenophobic constantly and blocked any action they tried to take.

 

Maybe if unemployed Brits were 'encouraged' into employment, we'd have more staff to process immigration/asylum claims... but then we'd need fewer immigrants...

Anyone who has had any contact with the NHS cannot fail to see how dependant the system is on foreign doctors,nurses and support staff.

Are you suggesting that those currently unemployed can fill those gaps?

We have imported labour consistently in the post war period to service our economy. Their children and grandchildren are now UK citizens.

It makes me laugh to hear the blame attached to “Lefties” for criticising the Conservative failures to tackle the root causes of our current problems having enjoyed 14 years of an overall majority in the H of C.

If their schemes were deemed unlawful or no more than some headline grabbing rubbish then so be it. Rwanda,barges were expensive ineffectual schemes dreamt up to try to mask the failure to process immigrants in a timely fashion.We now have a massive backlog of known asylum seekers and others who have disappeared into the community.

[RJRB]

54 minutes ago, hackey lad said:

I’m not a gambling man but could anyone tell me the odds on Sir Starmer not lasting two years. I could be tempted.

But 3 years ago you would have been tempted to have a Bob or two on the Conservatives being in power for the next decade.

[leviathan13]

10 minutes ago, RJRB said:

Anyone who has had any contact with the NHS cannot fail to see how dependant the system is on foreign doctors,nurses and support staff.

Are you suggesting that those currently unemployed can fill those gaps?

We have imported labour consistently in the post war period to service our economy. Their children and grandchildren are now UK citizens.

It makes me laugh to hear the blame attached to “Lefties” for criticising the Conservative failures to tackle the root causes of our current problems having enjoyed 14 years of an overall majority in the H of C.

If their schemes were deemed unlawful or no more than some headline grabbing rubbish then so be it. Rwanda,barges were expensive ineffectual schemes dreamt up to try to mask the failure to process immigrants in a timely fashion.We now have a massive backlog of known asylum seekers and others who have disappeared into the community.

Why is it always the extremes that are used when talking about NHS staff? There are plenty of lower level jobs that are currently being done by immigrants that don't require qualifications - but the unemployed Brits are too comfortable on benefits. The bleeding-hearts think it's abhorrent to expect Shaz to move 50 miles closer to work, but promote the idea of someone travelling 2000 miles from abroad to clean toilets and pick fruit.

 

I'm not against immigration... but there has to be a middle ground where those born here pull their wait to ease the burden on the rest of the tax payers (including the immigrants paying taxes).

 

 

[Mister M]

1 hour ago, alchresearch said:

An interesting article and a point that often gets overlooked.

 

You can vote out a political party for lying, cheating, and general incompetence. 

 

But you can't vote out the people who really run the country - civil servants

 

Home Office criticised over ‘woefully’ understated Tory asylum budgets

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/29/home-office-criticised-over-woefully-understated-tory-asylum-budgets

Thank you for this alchresearch:

 

Analysing three years of financial records, the IFS found the Home Office had told parliament at the start of each year it needed an average £110m to cover the UK’s asylum, border, visa and passport operations. However, it ended up spending vastly more: an average of £2.6bn a year.

“The Home Office has got into the bad habit of submitting initial budgets to parliament that it knows to be insufficient, in the expectation of a top-up from the Treasury’s contingency reserve later in the financial year,” it said.

The chancellor claimed last month she was facing a £22bn “hole” in the public finances left by the Tories, triggering a furious row with her predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, who dismissed the claims as “absolute nonsense”.

The IFS had also been critical publicly of an apparent political strategy by the chancellor to “discover” that the public finances were worse than expected.

But the IFS director, Paul Johnson, admitted in a post on X that when Reeves released her findings from a Treasury audit last month she had uncovered spending that “does genuinely appear to have been unfunded”.

 

I spotted this on another online news site, and the above confirms it. I'm sure the Mail won't cover it

Edited August 29 by Mister M

[RJRB]

1 hour ago, leviathan13 said:

Why is it always the extremes that are used when talking about NHS staff? There are plenty of lower level jobs that are currently being done by immigrants that don't require qualifications - but the unemployed Brits are too comfortable on benefits. The bleeding-hearts think it's abhorrent to expect Shaz to move 50 miles closer to work, but promote the idea of someone travelling 2000 miles from abroad to clean toilets and pick fruit.

 

I'm not against immigration... but there has to be a middle ground where those born here pull their wait to ease the burden on the rest of the tax payers (including the immigrants paying taxes).

 

 

I was not using extremes .As I said the NHS relies equally on doctors and the whole range of support staff.

The same applies to catering,farming ,food production etc.etc.

Its a situation that applies to every developed nation and cannot and will not change to any great extent in the coming years.

Much of it stems from former empires such as applies to the UK and France and Germanys post war boom was heavily dependent on foreign Labour.

It a totally glib statement to equate foreign labour to unemployed,or unemployable a white UK born potential workforce.

[hackey lad]

2 hours ago, RJRB said:

But 3 years ago you would have been tempted to have a Bob or two on the Conservatives being in power for the next decade.

Points awarded for answering my question about Starmer with a  comment  about the Tories