His wife is exempt due to EU deal/exemption.
General UK politics
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Isn’t she now his ex?
Regarding the 9 million, they key point assumption seem to be they aren’t offering any value apart from being leeches on benefits or services and ignore all benefits tangiable and non tangiable.
I read somewhere currently those on ILR status is around 400k.
I fully assume next phase of this reverse migration would be British citizens of first gen immigrants.
I read somewhere currently those on ILR status is around 400k.
I fully assume next phase of this reverse migration would be British citizens of first gen immigrants.
Thanks for this.
However, it doesn't seem to me like the number of inactive people has changed that much, has it?
And how many actually need supporting?
This number includes those who are students, who will often not get state aid, and in the case of foreign students, actually pay a lot, and will also include some who have retired early.
I didn't see how many of these inactive people are actually immigrants who are accessing state aid. I suspect not so many?
Also, is immigration increasing? Memory tells me that it shot up a few years ago but has been on the decline since then?
Net migration has been increasing since COVID
From 2000 to 2025, the UK population increased by over 10 million people, a rise primarily driven by net international migration. The population is also aging due to longer life expectancy and has become more urbanized. Immigration doesn't seem to be falling over time unless you cherry pick fluctuations from individual years
As regards those needing support then dependency ratio is the equation: the standard formula is population under 15 plus population over 65 divided by population aged between 16 and 64. Apparently this is the ratio used to calculate just the need to increase reaching pension age.
To maintain the number of workers per state pensioner, the state pension age may need to increase to 70 or 71 by 2050, up from 66. Pensioners will obviously be a mix of UK born and foreign born nationals (7.4 net million estimated since 2000) so it's relevant.
As regards those receiving other welfare payments - some of them may be immigrants. Entitlements are calculated according to need so the question isn't who should get them but can funds be found to continue without additional taxation or borrowing. I think it's a legitimate question.
Obviously we could become more productive and grow the economy to compensate but we do seem to be underperforming at present.
Although net migration did increase after the Covid (and notably, after we left the EU), my understanding is that fell pretty sharply in 2024.
One could of course just write that off as a one off, and it could shoot up again, but one could also consider the influx of foreign students in the years following Covid, the increase in non EU migrants to replace EU workers following Brexit, and the increase in humanitarian migrants (from Ukraine and Hong Kong, for example) in that same period.
If there actually is an issue in the UK that is caused or at least not helped by net migration then sure, the government should limit that, but it has to be properly backed up with some facts. It would be a bit of a disaster to just kick out a load of non-British people based on assumption/Farage's lies and then find that the problems in the country are (at best) still there, or actually get much worse.
One could of course just write that off as a one off, and it could shoot up again, but one could also consider the influx of foreign students in the years following Covid, the increase in non EU migrants to replace EU workers following Brexit, and the increase in humanitarian migrants (from Ukraine and Hong Kong, for example) in that same period.
If there actually is an issue in the UK that is caused or at least not helped by net migration then sure, the government should limit that, but it has to be properly backed up with some facts. It would be a bit of a disaster to just kick out a load of non-British people based on assumption/Farage's lies and then find that the problems in the country are (at best) still there, or actually get much worse.
We also need to account for falling birth rates over the past half a decade too.
Birth rates have been on an increasingly steady decline since a patriarchal society has changed and more women chose career options. Inflation has cemented that income requirement (both partners needing to work full time to pay bills - buy house etc) now for families, just to exist.
Immigrants will face the same economic challenges in that respect when deciding whether they too can afford to have a family in the years to come.
Affordable housing, lower costs of living (food, energy etc), lower costs of childcare options and flexible working arrangements to enable parents to accommodate children whilst working full time hours - are all a necessity if we wish to reverse domestic birth rates.
View: https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1974816581961056419
See, this is what I meant about the Greens. How fucking batshit insane can you get? Abolition of "landlords".
I thought the new guy sounded sensible for 10 mins then this…
What’s the actual policy? And what parts do you disagree with?
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/green-party-passes-motion-committing-abolish-landlords
A bit more detail on it.
Personally I disagree with pretty much every aspect, but that's not even really my point. For me it just shows the sort of people they are, how much they resent the rich and how little they think that people actually have a right to their wealth. How desperate they are to confiscate and to hell with the consequences (let alone the morality of it). Just sums that aspect of them up imo.
It's an eye catching title for the article but some of that policy makes sense.
Personally, I’m up for the richer in society not amassing more and more wealth whilst the majority get poorer.
Think of the rich people! I'm sure they all earned their money by lifting themselves by their bootstraps and not by exploitation of workers or various tax dodging schemes.
Remember, the machinery of capitalism is oiled by the blood of the workers for good reason!
Which is your opinion and obv you're entitled to it. I was just personally saying I can't vote for people who are basically Marxist (I hate using that term cos it sounds hyperbolic, but that is pretty much the way to describe someone who believes all property is theft etc) in their outlook. And this vote is good evidence of that.
To me the Greens are to the Socialist Workers Party as Reform are to the BNP. Not as extreme in their policies, but all their sympathies are in that direction and the activists are virtually identical.
I remember reading an article a while back which said that the Greens' leadership contest was actually quite hard-fought and that the guy who won was more extreme than the other candidates. If that's the case it'll be (mildly) interesting to see whether splits appear as time goes on.
I don't know enough about the Greens to know quite how much this becomes party policy simply as a result of a passed motion by an activist at the conference. It would obviously be a bit mad if it is a confirmed policy at this stage without any thought of costings or unintended impacts (and therefore, exceptions).
Obviously there needs to be something done regarding housing, and some of these do have some merit. You can see why, for example, building Council houses is a good idea, obviously.
However, it does seem that any kind of reform of housing has too much of a focus on demonising landlords. While there are undoubtedly a lot of dodgy landlords around, there are also a lot of good ones (many of whom are not professional landlords, and have just ended up with a spare or second property - which can happen to any of us), and there are also a lot of people who want and need to have short term lets.
If your entire policy is designed to make things difficult for landlords, it is the professional ones (and within that, the dodgy ones) who will find a way around it, and the decent ones who simply won't want to deal with the hassle.
Obviously there needs to be something done regarding housing, and some of these do have some merit. You can see why, for example, building Council houses is a good idea, obviously.
However, it does seem that any kind of reform of housing has too much of a focus on demonising landlords. While there are undoubtedly a lot of dodgy landlords around, there are also a lot of good ones (many of whom are not professional landlords, and have just ended up with a spare or second property - which can happen to any of us), and there are also a lot of people who want and need to have short term lets.
If your entire policy is designed to make things difficult for landlords, it is the professional ones (and within that, the dodgy ones) who will find a way around it, and the decent ones who simply won't want to deal with the hassle.
I would think a general policy of reducing reliance on institutional landlords, and producing more state supported accommodation is a good thing for making houses more affordable for the average person. Obviously needs to be done in a phased way.
They're talking about banning buy to let mortgages, so no small time landlord would be able to expand or enter the market. There'd be an ever greater domination by giant corporate landlords. I hate all this stuff fundamentally cos it's just so anti-science. It's pure, pig-headed denial of the market mechanism. There's one overwhelming problem with the housing market and that's the supply of new builds. Nothing else will solve that but making it easier to build.
I’d restrict the sale of residential property to corporations. New builds to sell to homeowners or local authorities. Councils should have their housing stock swelled. Remove the red tape and have a processes in place to tell NIMBYs to fuck off.
Redistribution is not a bad idea if you want a better, happier society you know.
But the rich just don't want to share.
I don't agree with the greens fully, just in part.
I actually don't think there's a feasible way a supply of new builds from a free market solving a housing issue, at least not in the way that doesn't put a lot of people into huge debt. All that will happen is that supply will be some level less than demand and prices will go up, and the people at the top will get richer. But, I don't know if thats what you were suggesting.
It needs to have a large government intervention to encourage affordability over profit. Discourage land banking, support smaller builders, discourage institutional buy/build to let, guaranteed returns to avoid peaks and troughs in building etc.
Didn't say it wasn't.
Imo it's an industry absolutely perfectly capable of operating in everyone's best interests simply via the market. All the problems that look like they need government intervention are themselves caused by other interventions.
There isn't redistribution where demand exceeds supply.
An extra 10m citizens swelling the population in the last two decades coupled to insufficient building is the problem not landlords.
An extra 10m citizens swelling the population in the last two decades coupled to insufficient building is the problem not landlords.
What are the good examples where the market on its own has provided a long term solution to affordable supply?
