The Hung Like a Donkey General Election December 2019 Thread

[peterms]

A tactical voting site has updated its previous recommendations, having corrected for the withdrawal of Brexit candidates from lots of seats.

For Kensington, they say

Quote

Recommendation changed in Kensington

Our previous recommendation was for the Liberal Democrats. We have temporarily removed our recommendation because the current polls are too close to call. We will issue a final recommendation before election day, either the Liberal Democrats or Labour, based on new data.

For lots of others, the previous recommendation to vote Libdem has become a recommendation to vote Labour.

[bobzy]

Just now, Risso said:

Blimey, talk about seeing what you want to see.  Well, Boris Johnson is obviously always going to be white, so that's one of the three. And who's to say that the other two people aren't Polish or Bulgarian if we're talking about immigrants?  What would you have said if the poster had pictured two Asian hospital workers, I would guess something like "Disgraceful, using token ethnic minorities to make it look like he's not racist."

Is there a link between more immigrants = worse NHS?

[peterms]

11 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Is there a link between more immigrants = worse NHS?

The opposite.  The NHS has long depended on workers from overseas, dating back to when Enoch Powell's Ministry of Health was recruiting hospital staff from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean.  Some info here, which predates the recent self-inflicted staff shortages caused by making EU national feel unwanted.

Quote

• The Coalition Government's plans to restrict immigration to the UK through capping non-EU immigrants and to introduce more stringent controls for highly skilled migrants are contradictory given the long history of recruitment of overseas health workers.
• Since the 1930s, successive governments have recruited doctors, nurses and other health workers from overseas to work in UK health services with the first mass recruitment waves of nurses from the African Caribbean in the 1950s and doctors from the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s.
• The need for health workers was significantly increased by the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948 and the expansion of specialists and technologies.
• Immigration controls were tightened during the 1960s and 1970s but the increasing demand for overseas health workers continued.
• Discrimination around training and career opportunities of first generation overseas health workers has had negative consequences for recruitment from the second generation.
• The lack of any system of accurate data to monitor the migration, immigration, recruitment and retention of health workers has exacerbated the difficulties of manpower planning.
• Shortfalls in certain fields of nursing and medicine continue and are predicted to intensify because of an international shortage of health workers.
• Putting history to the forefront would help policymakers realize the significance of the NHS's continuous dependence on overseas health workers and the need therefore both to improve equity and opportunity for such health workers and to integrate this fact of health manpower planning into national immigration policy.

 

[StefanAVFC]

23 minutes ago, Risso said:

Blimey, talk about seeing what you want to see.  Well, Boris Johnson is obviously always going to be white, so that's one of the three. And who's to say that the other two people aren't Polish or Bulgarian if we're talking about immigrants?  What would you have said if the poster had pictured two Asian hospital workers, I would guess something like "Disgraceful, using token ethnic minorities to make it look like he's not racist."

The word 'white' is all that you took from Rob's post?

My goodness. Talk about defensive.

[StefanAVFC]

22 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Is there a link between more immigrants = worse NHS?

EU immigrants contribute more than they take out when it comes to tax, social etc

Non-EU less so, but we could always implement a 'points based' system for those whilst inside the EU. We chose not to.

It's dogwhistle, racist Brexiteer baiting at worst.

Misleading at best.

[Risso]

24 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Is there a link between more immigrants = worse NHS?

Erm, I wouldn't imagine so.  I think the whole point of the advert is that post-Brexit, by allowing people with the relevant skills in from all over the world rather than people from the EU having priority, there will be ample opportunities to make sure the NHS is adequately staffed.

[cyrusr]

Any noises of the trade deal negotiation papers making their way online yet? Would be curious to see the detail in them and the noises from both sides. 

[snowychap]

3 minutes ago, cyrusr said:

Any noises of the trade deal negotiation papers making their way online yet? Would be curious to see the detail in them and the noises from both sides. 

 

[blandy]

4 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

I don't know why we can't just be people.  Why do humans need to subdivide?

Dogs don't look at other dogs and think "I'm not sniffing your arse, you're black", or "you shouldn't be in Sutton Park because you're an Alsatian, you French/German clearing in the woods".

Exactly Rob. That was what I was getting at a bit ago.

23 hours ago, blandy said:

People are people. All different. It's where this whole thing goes awry. "Jews support Israel's government" or "Football fans are hooligans". It's utter rubbish.

World, stop picking on a trait, a religion, an ethnicity a culture and slating everyone closely or even vaguely associated with it as "all the same".

[cyrusr]

7 minutes ago, snowychap said:

 

Thanks but its asking me to download some random application which I would be wary of at the best of time, but given I'm on a work computer, I might wait until it comes more widely available! 

[snowychap]

13 minutes ago, cyrusr said:

Thanks but its asking me to download some random application which I would be wary of at the best of time, but given I'm on a work computer, I might wait until it comes more widely available! 

Is it? It just takes me to an openload download screen to download a zip file with the documents in.

[cyrusr]

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Is it? It just takes me to an openload download screen to download a zip file with the documents in.

Yep, tried it again and its fine. Not sure what happened before! Thanks. 

[snowychap]

I wouldn't be surprised if 'his team' suggested some time in the New Year or the end of never.

[LondonLax]

39 minutes ago, Risso said:

Erm, I wouldn't imagine so.  I think the whole point of the advert is that post-Brexit, by allowing people with the relevant skills in from all over the world rather than people from the EU having priority, there will be ample opportunities to make sure the NHS is adequately staffed.

That makes no sense. The UK is already in charge of how many potential NHS employees it could allow from outside the EU, Brexit won’t change that. The point being made here about being “post Brexit” is that the UK will be able to further restrict the number of people able to make use of the NHS by restricting the number of migrants from the EU.

[Awol]

5 hours ago, Xann said:

The biggest cold fact is the rock everyone's begatting their kids onto is becoming sterile.

Another big cold fact is that money isn't a universal constant. It's an abstract, we made it up.

Time to deprogram yourself, soldier. Because the answer isn't handing the country to the money men.

Those were the days, going down the NAAFI for furious debates about climate change and predatory capitalism...

I’m on a third stint at Uni and drowning in leftie gibberish about intersectionality, not right-wing economic theory. Btw, my preferred pronouns are He/Hee (currently identify as Michael Jackson).

 

 

[OutByEaster?]

13 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I wouldn't be surprised if 'his team' suggested some time in the New Year or the end of never.

October 31st.

Definitely.

 

[colhint]

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

Is there a link between more immigrants = worse NHS?

I don't thinks a case of immigrants making it worse, it's more a case of numbers.  Less than 15 years ago our population was just 60m. Now it's over 67m. So what is affected is infrastructure. Birmingham, and I use this as an example because it has near enough a million people, has 42 hospitals of varying sizes, some very big some not so. Nevertheless. 42 hospitals for a million people. Now the uk population has grown by 7m,  just to stay level we should have probably built 294 new hospitals across the country. I know it's not like for like and some efficiencies could be made, but surely we should have built 200 by now. But we haven't.

[Rodders]

4 minutes ago, colhint said:

I don't thinks a case of immigrants making it worse, it's more a case of numbers.  Less than 15 years ago our population was just 60m. Now it's over 67m. So what is affected is infrastructure. Birmingham, and I use this as an example because it has near enough a million people, has 42 hospitals of varying sizes, some very big some not so. Nevertheless. 42 hospitals for a million people. Now the uk population has grown by 7m,  just to stay level we should have probably built 294 new hospitals across the country. I know it's not like for like and some efficiencies could be made, but surely we should have built 200 by now. But we haven't.

 

See I read that and for the problem is the complete lack of sufficient infrastructure - not the immigrants. 

On the population numbers, what would be relevant is how much they contribute to the pressures versus general population growth anyway. 

A quick google ( https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics ) brings up: 

• According to the latest estimates by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), net migration from overseas to the UK in the year ending March 2019 totalled 226,000 (about double the average level of annual net migration during the period since 1975, which was just over 113,000 per year). See the latest estimates hereand the latest Migration Statistics Quarterly Report.
• The ONS has said the latest estimates are ‘experimental’ following the identification of limitations regarding the main source of the figures – the International Passenger Survey. Here is the ONS’s full briefing on the various adjustments resulting from these findings: ‘Understanding different migration data sources: August 2019 progress report’ (August 2019).

Given that shutting off migration entirely is daft, I really can't see how curtailing migration would have made any significant difference to our problems. You spread that figure out across the country and the impact is going to be a fairly negligible element contribution to each region.

[Chindie]

I do sometimes think the political threads here are about 5 minutes from mentioning 'cucks' and 'owning the libs'.

[colhint]

I think I said it was infrastructure,  But I don't think it's going to be fairly negligible either, 15 years to to build that much infrastructure is it, It's not just hospitals, It's the same with schools, Brum has over 400, so thats near enough 3000 schools to build.