Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog, 3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
Intimidation, threats and non-stop online abuse, far right activists were able to bring down Jacinda Ardern.
Using the exact same tactics far right activists add another notch to their belt.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/300886222/australian-indigenous-tv-host-stan-grant-quits-abc-programme-over-racist-backlash-after-king-charles-iii-coronation
Sounds familiar.
Britain can’t sustain this level of immigration
The government must address our reliance on cheap migrant labour and foreign students’ cash
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/britain-cant-sustain-this-level-of-immigration-dlctxljpk
“This week the government will reportedly announce restrictions on some types of foreign students bringing their family members into the country. This is intended as a pre-emptive move to take the sting out of Thursday’s release of official immigration figures, which are expected to show that last year some 700,000 more people came into the UK than left it.
This is an astronomical rise in net migration, after years of political promises to bring the influx down. The numbers have been swelled recently by Ukrainian refugees and Hongkongers fleeing the Chinese crackdown. But even when those are removed from the total, that still leaves around 500,000 immigrants a year. The problem long predates both those emergencies.
Suddenly, political leaders are scrambling to be seen to be doing something. Interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme, the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, said he wanted the numbers to come down. But when pressed on how he would achieve this, he waffled. He talked about a skills failure forcing employers to recruit from abroad and said he wanted British people trained to do those jobs. Terrific — but how would he get immigration figures down? Would he reduce the number of foreign students? No, he wanted foreign students to come. So how would he get numbers down? He wouldn’t say.
Foreign students and their dependants are key to this crisis, along with foreign workers and their family members. The number of foreign workers’ dependants — 155,343 — has almost tripled since 2019. This rise has been dwarfed, in turn, by foreign students and their families. In 2022, visas were granted to 485,758 students, who brought in an additional 135,788 dependants. This means that more than 22 per cent of study-related visas were issued to dependants, compared with 6 per cent in 2019. The government’s proposed restriction on foreign students’ families, which it believes will cut immigration numbers by 100,000, will reportedly be limited to those on certain types of course. Nevertheless, any such restriction has been fiercely opposed by the universities. That’s hardly surprising. The universities now rely heavily upon the fees they charge foreign students. This has long distorted university priorities, making them dependent on countries such as China and excluding British students from prestigious universities.
Moreover, one anxiety in government is that some foreign students are, in the home secretary’s words, “propping up, frankly, substandard courses in inadequate institutions”. Once again, governments have been complicit in in this. Professor Brian Bell, chairman of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee, told Today: “Most universities, for most courses, lose money on teaching British students and offset that loss by charging more for international students.”
“Here’s what’s happened as a result. Universities can’t afford to teach British students and take foreign ones instead. These help prop up sub-standard university courses for young people who aren’t up to academic study and at the same time aren’t being trained in the skills the country requires. So employers have to recruit workers from abroad — swelling immigration numbers — to fill the vacancies caused by the dearth of vital skills resulting from a policy of university expansion, which is being funded by students from abroad who are swelling immigration numbers. This is, to put it mildly, no way to run a railroad. What it signifies is the total absence of joined-up thinking over immigration and the needs of the country. For decades, politicians have flinched from discussing immigration because anyone who suggests that it should be reduced is automatically tarred and feathered as a racist, bigot and xenophobe. In addition, successive governments have used immigrant labour to dodge or conceal difficult policy choices they don’t want to make. Instead of expanding medical school places and nurse training, doctors and nurses were imported from the developing world, thus also depriving those countries of expertise they themselves badly need.”
“On his Substack blog the politics professor Matthew Goodwin writes of “the two main parties which — like a drug dealer — got our economy and big businesses completely hooked on importing cheap migrant labour from abroad, removing any incentive for them to invest in British workers and innovation”. Meanwhile, a near-record five million people in Britain are on out-of-work benefits.
The pressure from these immigrant numbers is unsustainable. Even if net migration were 250,000 to 300,000 a year, the equivalent of a city bigger than Birmingham would be added to the population every five years. Services are already foundering. The row between those who want to build houses on the green belt and those derided as nimbys misses the point. There aren’t enough houses because of the population explosion.”
Out of curiosity, I have a few questions if anyone or any economists, can care to lend an answer.
a) I never took economics, so I was wondering when the reserve bank puts up the o.c.r causing mortgage repayments to increase, where does the extra money go. Do the banks or the govt or the reserve bank, end up with it? It’s a lot of extra money, that has to go somewhere?
b) Could the reserve bank, instead of increasing interest rates, change the gst rate to reduce spending, to try to curb inflation? Has this been tried anywhere, and would it be a better tool, or would increasing gst, itself increase inflation?
c) If the reserve bank can print money during the pandemic, where does the money come from, and why doesn’t it use it, to just pay off the govt debt?
d) Could a contributor to youth crime be msd’s harsh treatment of youth, causing some who have difficulty for whatever reason to get into work, think it preferable to commit crime, and then get put on home-D, where msd can’t pressure them?
Interesting questions Jaimie. They might not get a reply here but one of the posters may take up the points and certainly once raised so clearly people start thinking about them.
I’ve collected some great quotes that summarise or ridicule our concerns – George Bernard Shaw, plus some good links – but I haven’t included all sorry. (If this goes up Martyn can it be last for the day as I wouldn’t want to send important comments to the bottom. But these are good for an ironic even sarcastic laugh and really relevant, worth referring back to FTTT to keep one in balance.)
GB Shaw thoughts for the day, week, eternity?:
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.” … “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5217.George_Bernard_Shaw?page=5
“The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.”
― Bernard Shaw
“The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.”
― George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism
https://www.quotetab.com/george-bernard-shaw-quotes-about-thinking
(And acerbic – from an Irish POV?)
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
“Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
― George Bernard Shaw
“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.”
― George Bernard Shaw
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. George Bernard Shaw
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. George Bernard Shaw
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_bernard_shaw_137447
‘[S]ocial questions never get solved until the pressure becomes so desperate that even governments recognise the necessity for moving. And to bring the pressure to this point, the poets must lend a hand to the few who are willing to do public work in the stages at which nothing but abuse is to be gained by it.’
(Shaw, 1964, p.975; quoted in John Constable, ‘Derek Mahon’s Development’, in Neil Corcoran, ed., Chosen Ground [… &c.], 1992, pp.107-18.p.154.)
http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/s/Shaw_GB/quots.htm
Tree and fire info content. Really important info for anyone looking to understand the role of trees and fire in our near future as two important factors – one destructive (mostly unwanted) and one mostly positive. (Fire can be positive destruction when it is done carefully within bounds of carefully applied kaitiaki rules as the native people in Australia have continued doing in some areas.)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/extreme-fire-scientists-trigger-rare-fire-devil-near-twizel-in-world-first-experiment/VLXQ4EDYWBBDRFLJEAN2CMHUFU/
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