The Labour Government

[Vic]

You are absolutely correct. We live in a declining economy with most manufacturing outsourced, a low birthrate and ageing population. In demographic and population terms a ticking time bomb. No politicians seem to have the courage to clearly articulate this and therefore why we actually need immigration and lots of it. That is still different to 'open borders'.

Our political leaders also need the courage to be honest about the challenges presented by large scale immigration.
Strain on public services, housing and education.
The cultural challenge of integration.
The problems faced by some (mainly inner city boroughs) that have seen their bame/immigrant population rise in percentage terms from single digits to over 90% in some cases in around half a century.
Low paid workers undercutting wage structure
The need to accept and manage the risk of extremists being among the migrants streams.

It should be possible to have honest and grown up political discourse/ leadership on all of this but apparently not.

I'd give you benefit of doubt and assume this isn't just more wummery, but no borough anywhere has a 90% BAME or immigrant population.

It's the Labour thread so the party that introduced the minimum wage and has just raised it has obviously had the courage to address that challenge. And to address house building (which will need immigrant workers).

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

I'd give you benefit of doubt and assume this isn't just more wummery, but no borough anywhere has a 90% BAME or immigrant population.

It's the Labour thread so the party that introduced the minimum wage and has just raised it has obviously had the courage to address that challenge. And to address house building (which will need immigrant workers).

Sorry, might be a 90% rise rather than % of population.

 

[Mancini Manus Domini]

If Labour was bold enough to reform the voting system to PR now, while they have the chance, who would it favour the most, a consensus of the centre, right or left?

Would it limit the potential for extremist policies as without an absolute majority any party would have to compromise?

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Labour run Cheshire West and Chester have voted through a new public space protection order for the whole borough seems a bit ott to me.

New Public Space Protection Order aims to create an even friendlier environment | Cheshire West and Chester Council

Cheshire West and Chester Council has created a new Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) that applies across the whole borough following a public consultation and decision by its Cabinet.

www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

Defeats the object of a PSPO.

 

[Kompany Car]

I think I felt a faint tingling sensation. Not entirely unpleasant to be honest.

London is a service economy, the absence of sprawling manufacturing plants in the city is a bit of a clue, and yes that 41% like the remaining 59% will be seeking employment in the services sector. Given the unemployment rate in London is 5%, it is safe to conclude the remaining 95% will be mainly employed in the services sector.

The UK is a 80% service economy, so London reflects this. A quarter of the UK’s tax revenue is generated by London. That 13%, half of which are foreign born, are really pulling their weight.

Hopefully, regions like Lincolnshire can start showing the same work ethic going forward :)

If you invest the same sums of money into Lincolnshire as London has had in the last 40yrs it might be a very different place.

London was nothing like the money making centre it is now back in the 70s.

Capital cities on the whole have an unfair advantage when you compare them to other places in the country particularly if you have got a centralised economy like in the UK. Germany has a much better decentralised one and as such the wealth is more even distributed.

When comes to immigration the portion that are doing the heavy lifting are very highly skilled individuals. I worked in London for 8 yrs and can remember doing a survey of how many different nationalities there were in the office of 250 people, there were 38 from Argentinians to Finnish, from South Africans to Canadians and everything else inbetween. The majority were earning around £100k, give or take 20k and that was 15yrs ago. Every one of them had multiple degrees and were fluent english speakers. I guess the point is, like people in the UK, not all immigrants are created equally and the ones likely to rock up in Lincolnshire are more likely to not be the same as those generating the wealth in London.

 

[Scottyboi]

Labour should take some pointers from Denmark when it comes to mass immigration.

 

[Hertzblue]

London's basically a broken city. Over the last thirty or so years, it's essentially become a place where you can be very well off, or relatively poor, and it's very difficult to be anything in between.

Immigrants aren't driving out people who were born and raised in London. House prices were pushed up so high that many Londoners will have had to move out. At the top, there are the lots of people in highly paid jobs, and plenty of foreign born people who are based in London, as it's one of the top few international cities in the World.

The housing for average earners - where we would be in a semi-detached, or a terraced house around Manchester just doesn't exist. I worked for charities when I lived there, and as recently as 1999, when I bought my first flat, the price was reasonable compared with my salary. By the time I was selling my last place to move back to Manchester, in what was one of the few "cheaper" areas, the people viewing were earning 3 to 4 times my salary.

So instead of average earners, you get huge numbers of people house sharing in poor quality accommodation - something that attracts two main groups - young foreigners from Europe, Australia etc., who are happy as they just want to be "in London" - and immigrants from poorer countries, who are doing all the service jobs that the well off need.

And that social housing you hoped to get? In London it was messed up in the 80s with right to buy. Because it was becoming so valuable, much of the good quality housing stock was bought out, often by speculators funding the purchase for people who couldn't afford it on their own. What was left, tended to be the poorest quality houses in the roughest areas, and the tower blocks, which had huge maintenance costs (and of course LAs weren't allowed to use their right to buy money to keep these properties in good condition). This leads in two directions. First, that the housing stock is really low quality, and not in great areas, so again, it attracts people with little choice about where to live. Second, as houses are sold off, the pressure of numbers means that you have to be either statutory homeless, or disabled, to have any chance of rehousing. So, you end up with areas becoming even more impoverished.

London has definitely changed, and that's reflected in the number of immigrants, but the driver of the change came from the wealth pushing people out, rather than the immigrants.

Err , I have lived in around London and worked in London for the best part of 40 years .
I can confirm for you , it has definitely changed .
A good part of what you say is also true re right to buy etc.
However if you think that in any way alters the fact that immigration has not had a massive impact on the life chances of the poorest Londoners you are badly mistaken . Over 50% of social housing stock has a foreign born tenant , how could it not ?

 

[BobKowalski]

If you invest the same sums of money into Lincolnshire as London has had in the last 40yrs it might be a very different place.

London was nothing like the money making centre it is now back in the 70s.

Capital cities on the whole have an unfair advantage when you compare them to other places in the country particularly if you have got a centralised economy like in the UK. Germany has a much better decentralised one and as such the wealth is more even distributed.

When comes to immigration the portion that are doing the heavy lifting are very highly skilled individuals. I worked in London for 8 yrs and can remember doing a survey of how many different nationalities there were in the office of 250 people, there were 38 from Argentinians to Finnish, from South Africans to Canadians and everything else inbetween. The majority were earning around £100k, give or take 20k and that was 15yrs ago. Every one of them had multiple degrees and were fluent english speakers. I guess the point is, like people in the UK, not all immigrants are created equally and the ones likely to rock up in Lincolnshire are more likely to not be the same as those generating the wealth in London.

I would happily distribute investment more equally around the country. One advantage of the EU was there investment in places that were often overlooked by central Govt. Unequal wealth distribution holds us back imo.

Lincolnshire has no motorways and transport infrastructure is an important driver of investment and business. My understanding from people living there is that the people do not want one as it will despoil the idyllic charm. It is a large county with no motorways, no significant urban centres other than Lincoln (a lovely town imo) and a sparse and widely distributed population. It will never attract major investment as a consequence, nor it seems do the people there want it.

London will and does attract a high level of immigrants with a wide range of skills from the bottom to the top end. Top earners will obviously gravitate to where the opportunities are and London provides those opportunities. This does not prevent Lincolnshire or wherever seeking to maximise their attractiveness to outside labour and to actively campaign and secure better infrastructure and investment.

Finally, the purpose of my post was that I get bored of people hating on London when it in terms of wealth creation and generating tax revenue (26% of the UK tax take) it is only matched by the South East. Between them they are contributing nearly half of the nations tax revenue. In short I like London, so put some respect on the place :)

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

If Labour was bold enough to reform the voting system to PR now, while they have the chance, who would it favour the most, a consensus of the centre, right or left?

Would it limit the potential for extremist policies as without an absolute majority any party would have to compromise?

It would almost certainly be a left of centre consensus, particularly if the Greens, LD’s and Labour stood down in every constituency where they weren’t second.
Yes, you’d likely never have an absolute majority but you might get a bit more consistency of policy and less dramatic upheavals every however many years it takes to get rid of a government under the present system.

 

[Mancini Manus Domini]

It would almost certainly be a left of centre consensus, particularly if the Greens, LD’s and Labour stood down in every constituency where they weren’t second.
Yes, you’d likely never have an absolute majority but you might get a bit more consistency of policy and less dramatic upheavals every however many years it takes to get rid of a government under the present system.

That sounds ideal to me, and my vote could actually count for something.

 

[bluenova]

Err , I have lived in around London and worked in London for the best part of 40 years .
I can confirm for you , it has definitely changed .
A good part of what you say is also true re right to buy etc.
However if you think that in any way alters the fact that immigration has not had a massive impact on the life chances of the poorest Londoners you are badly mistaken . Over 50% of social housing stock has a foreign born tenant , how could it not ?

I absolutely agree that it's changed - and I'm not disagreeing that it's not a great place to be poor. But do you think it's poor immigrants who have driven the situation?

Over 50% sounds high, but not sure it's unfairly so. The last census had the figure at 47%, which is high, but then the foreign born population of London was around 41% at the time. Given the huge numbers of very poor people in London, I'd assume foreign born people are overrepresented at the poorer end, so even 47% may well mean they're underrepresented in terms of taking up social housing.

But I doubt we'd be in this situation if London hadn't been gobbling up wealth, house prices hadn't rocketed to match the higher paid jobs, social housing hadn't been sold off, and the "middle" hadn't been forced out of the city. You don't get poor people from other parts of the country moving to London, but the beast sucks in poor and young people from around the world to support the service sector. They may end up as London's new poor, but they're their because nobody else is desperate to move into poor quality, shared accommodation, and work for minimum wage (or less).

An ex-City boy like Farage made his money in London, but prefers the poor to blame other poor people, rather than take any responsibility himself.

 

[bluenova]

It would almost certainly be a left of centre consensus, particularly if the Greens, LD’s and Labour stood down in every constituency where they weren’t second.
Yes, you’d likely never have an absolute majority but you might get a bit more consistency of policy and less dramatic upheavals every however many years it takes to get rid of a government under the present system.

Wouldn't the Greens and Lib Dems do worse under PR if they stood down everywhere they weren't the main challenger? What you're describing sounds more like a pact that you'd have under FPTP.

I'm still not convinced it would make a huge difference. I completely understand the logic, and it's a tempting idea, but voters are becoming a lot more open to tactical voting, whereas official pacts and coalitions will often be less than the sum of their parts.

Labour and the Lib Dems already had an "unofficial" pact at the last election, which resulted in a landslide for Labour and the Lib Dems getting their most ever MPs. The last time the two parties did this, was when Blair was in power, and we saw then how well it worked for both parties.

As for the Greens, the only seat that I can see where they would be the main progressive challenger is Isle of Wight East, where they came third. They'd surely only want to be in any kind of pact if Labour stood aside in seats Labour expected to win, and that would be a tricky arrangement to make.

 

[Vic]

Sorry, might be a 90% rise rather than % of population.

So a Borough with 100,000 people might now have 19 immigrants rather than 10...

Still, we've all got stats wrong. I think my point would be that the problem for "working class" areas of London boroughs is not immigration (which would keep the area working class) but gentrification. I knew a guy who lived in a 5th floor flat in Soho, and he was a trustee of the Soho Housing Association and spent a lot of time defending their stock of property against developers.

Brick Lane: Gentrification threat to Spitalfields Bangladeshi community

Could the Bangladeshi community that made Brick Lane famous for its curries be forced out as the area gentrifies?

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[ganganvince]

The whole point of bringing "cars for the disabled" into this argument was to stop the cunts who don't really need them (blaggers) .....not to fuck up people who are genuine.

For example those who give their cars to family members which also happens a lot. The druggies exaggerating their issues...the list is endless.

But no lets take winter fuel allowance off old cunts .....so easy that.

So I'm not sure why it's going down this road?

20% of all new car sales are on mobility schemes.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Wouldn't the Greens and Lib Dems do worse under PR if they stood down everywhere they weren't the main challenger? What you're describing sounds more like a pact that you'd have under FPTP.

I'm still not convinced it would make a huge difference. I completely understand the logic, and it's a tempting idea, but voters are becoming a lot more open to tactical voting, whereas official pacts and coalitions will often be less than the sum of their parts.

Labour and the Lib Dems already had an "unofficial" pact at the last election, which resulted in a landslide for Labour and the Lib Dems getting their most ever MPs. The last time the two parties did this, was when Blair was in power, and we saw then how well it worked for both parties.

As for the Greens, the only seat that I can see where they would be the main progressive challenger is Isle of Wight East, where they came third. They'd surely only want to be in any kind of pact if Labour stood aside in seats Labour expected to win, and that would be a tricky arrangement to make.

You’re absolutely right and I’ve definitely mis-written!!
Standing down, under FPTP, would indeed lead to a left of centre consensus and would ensure the Tories never formed a government again.
PR would enable people to vote in a much ‘freer’ way by ensuring representation for their position.

 

[Kompany Car]

I would happily distribute investment more equally around the country. One advantage of the EU was there investment in places that were often overlooked by central Govt. Unequal wealth distribution holds us back imo.

Lincolnshire has no motorways and transport infrastructure is an important driver of investment and business. My understanding from people living there is that the people do not want one as it will despoil the idyllic charm. It is a large county with no motorways, no significant urban centres other than Lincoln (a lovely town imo) and a sparse and widely distributed population. It will never attract major investment as a consequence, nor it seems do the people there want it.

London will and does attract a high level of immigrants with a wide range of skills from the bottom to the top end. Top earners will obviously gravitate to where the opportunities are and London provides those opportunities. This does not prevent Lincolnshire or wherever seeking to maximise their attractiveness to outside labour and to actively campaign and secure better infrastructure and investment.

Finally, the purpose of my post was that I get bored of people hating on London when it in terms of wealth creation and generating tax revenue (26% of the UK tax take) it is only matched by the South East. Between them they are contributing nearly half of the nations tax revenue. In short I like London, so put some respect on the place :)

Not that Im particularly bothered about Lincolnshire, but where do you get the impression that they didnt want motorways ? The M180 motorway runs across north Lincolnshire so they were pretty poor at not wanting them. The reason they dont have motorways is because the population density is low, hence it wasn't a viable investment when the major motorways were built in the 50s and 60s.

The main industry in Lincolnshire is agriculture, this is historic as the land is fertile and in turn it produces 30% of the nations vegetables and 18% of the nations poultry. Greater London on the other hand produces zero. The adage you dont judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree comes to mind, construct it a fish ladder though and it can have a go (this is what investment does). Maybe areas outside London should charge a very large tariff for generating all the electricity or for supplying them food, that might start to push money into other areas of the UK.

As regards overall investment, if motorways were the answer then Castleford (again somewhere I dont give a toss about) should be a mecca for investment. M1 less than 4 miles away, A1M less than 2 miles away, M62 runs through it. Does it get high tech industries, banking, high value jobs ? Nope it gets low paid warehouse jobs. It remains somewhere that was left to rot when the mining industry closed.

The only reason London and the South East generate so much money is because of the investment over many decades, M25 and the major arterial roads, fast and efficient rail networks and the trickle down economy within and from London. Hell HS2 was canned for the northern section, but surprise, surprise the bit from Birmingham to London is horrendously over budget and still being built, most of the cost due to nimbys in the home counties. Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) was horrendously over budget, but because it was in London, well it had to be done whatever it cost. The latest investments Lower Thames crossing, 3rd Runway at Heathrow will just increase the disparity.

Meanwhile, Transpennine keeps cutting back on what it was intending to do, the Northern Powerhouse funding for rail and road is getting cut back and probably more following the spending review. Yet Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds all have great universities, with a pool of talented people. Do they stay in the area and build companies and wealth for the area ? No they graduate and work in London, just like I did at one point, because outside of working on a building site or in a factory there were bugger all opportunities and many years later its still the same, but the factories are replaced by warehouses.

Dont get me wrong I like London its a great city and I have plenty of friends who live there, but bring them out of London and let them use the shite infrastructure we have up north and they soon get frustrated when trains and buses run once an hour, not to mention how dilapidated most of it is.

 

[hilts]

I would happily distribute investment more equally around the country. One advantage of the EU was there investment in places that were often overlooked by central Govt. Unequal wealth distribution holds us back imo.

Lincolnshire has no motorways and transport infrastructure is an important driver of investment and business. My understanding from people living there is that the people do not want one as it will despoil the idyllic charm. It is a large county with no motorways, no significant urban centres other than Lincoln (a lovely town imo) and a sparse and widely distributed population. It will never attract major investment as a consequence, nor it seems do the people there want it.

London will and does attract a high level of immigrants with a wide range of skills from the bottom to the top end. Top earners will obviously gravitate to where the opportunities are and London provides those opportunities. This does not prevent Lincolnshire or wherever seeking to maximise their attractiveness to outside labour and to actively campaign and secure better infrastructure and investment.

Finally, the purpose of my post was that I get bored of people hating on London when it in terms of wealth creation and generating tax revenue (26% of the UK tax take) it is only matched by the South East. Between them they are contributing nearly half of the nations tax revenue. In short I like London, so put some respect on the place :)

Imagine liking a place because of its tax raising abilities, god that's sad, cost of everything value of nothing has never been more apt.

 

[Brewster's millions]

I absolutely agree that it's changed - and I'm not disagreeing that it's not a great place to be poor. But do you think it's poor immigrants who have driven the situation?

Over 50% sounds high, but not sure it's unfairly so. The last census had the figure at 47%, which is high, but then the foreign born population of London was around 41% at the time. Given the huge numbers of very poor people in London, I'd assume foreign born people are overrepresented at the poorer end, so even 47% may well mean they're underrepresented in terms of taking up social housing.

But I doubt we'd be in this situation if London hadn't been gobbling up wealth, house prices hadn't rocketed to match the higher paid jobs, social housing hadn't been sold off, and the "middle" hadn't been forced out of the city. You don't get poor people from other parts of the country moving to London, but the beast sucks in poor and young people from around the world to support the service sector. They may end up as London's new poor, but they're their because nobody else is desperate to move into poor quality, shared accommodation, and work for minimum wage (or less).

An ex-City boy like Farage made his money in London, but prefers the poor to blame other poor people, rather than take any responsibility himself.

People working hard, getting on and paying a shit load of tax are to blame then?

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Imagine liking a place because of its tax raising abilities, god that's sad, cost of everything value of nothing has never been more apt.

Thatchers Britain......

 

[Don Karleone]