The so called free market really did a bang up job didn't it? The proprietary buggy mess of Windows and the walled garden of MacOS which given its *nix underpinnings could have been really fantastically awesome but instead is a proprietary buggy mess.
Immigration is actually one of the main issues in the UK and it's not about racism.
Productivity, population growth (and impact on housing and services), population aging (and impact on social care and NHS), societal and cultural changes and conflicts, national identity, etc are all linked to immigration.
The issue is compounded by the fact that successive governments say they want to be tough on immigration, but actually do the opposite. This is what pushes voters to Reform UK and away from the Tories, among other things. Labour is now doing the same (relatively tough talk but no actual effective action).
So you want me to convince myself that immigration is an issue?
You blame immigrants moving into the country causing what problem exactly? Too many NHS workers from foreign countries now, or too much competition for you when applying for roles?
This isn’t a serious contribution to the discussion. The overall level of NHS services would clearly be far lower (non-existent in some cases) without the contribution of immigrants.
Do you believe that foreigners should be allowed to practice as nurses with fake qualifications? Because the NHS does. As they were ACTIVELY working while the NHS knew about the forgery.
Do you have evidence that there is a widespread, institutional fake qualifications problem with native NHS nurses? Please provide evidence. This is what would show that foreign workers in the NHS do not drag down standards on average.
We’re not going to figure out a practical way to improve the NHS with this level of debate. We get that you don’t like foreign nurses, but I’m not going to respond to your rhetorical questions.
You put words in my mouth, that's a dishonest way of arguing :)
I never once said all foreign nurses or bad, nor did I say I dislike them. I pointed out widespread, institutional level fraud that puts patients at risk, exclusively by foreign NHS staff.
It's worrying you can't respond to the argument without strawmans. Is patient safety a concern for you or does politics trump it?
You know that the NHS crucially depends on immigrant doctors and nurses and that their contribution is overwhelmingly positive. Your original comment was a completely transparent attempt to derail the discussion with a single cherry picked example.
> The issue is compounded by the fact that successive governments say they want to be tough on immigration, but actually do the opposite.
There’s a simple explanation for this. Being “tough” on immigration would be bad for the economy, bad for the NHS, and bad for the country as a whole. So once a party is actually in government, they don’t want to do it, whatever they said in order to gain votes during the election campaign.
Or, maybe massively restricting immigration is actually a great idea and the establishment is conspiring to prevent it. Just like with Brexit, right?
High immigration is the cheaper short term solution at the "cost" of other, deeper issues. Restricting immigration is only be "bad" for the economy because systemic issues are not tackled.
The NHS relies on foreign workers. Why? Because salaries and conditions are shit so locals either do not train for those jobs or give up and moce to Australia at some point. It is cheaper to keep it that way.
12% of 25-34 years old are "economically inactive", which means deep systemic issues.
Generally immigration also keep salaries lower and also productivity lower (and that's why the left is actually historically not too keen).
This is difficult to debate seriously because there is always someone to cry "racist".
If you actually put the fixes for those “systemic issues” on the table, it’s obvious that no-one is going to vote for them, so they’re total non-starters. E.g. it would be great to pay nurses more, but no-one is going to vote for the tax hike required to fund it.
If any of this is difficult to debate seriously, that’s because opponents of current immigration policy consistently appeal to the lowest common denominator (people’s prejudices) rather than framing a proper argument. Even in this thread, you can see someone trying (absurdly) to redirect the discussion towards some Nigerian nurses with fake qualifications.
There’s a simple explanation for this. Being “tough” on immigration would be bad for the economy, bad for the NHS, and bad for the country as a whole. So once a party is actually in government, they don’t want to do it, whatever they said in order to gain votes during the election campaign.
You missed one important point: A rational party, or at least one with a rational leader. If you're dumb enough you will go through with it no matter how much it hurts your economy, your health system, and your country as a whole. I'm not in the UK but maybe someone from there could provide an estimate, on a scale of 0 to Trump, where does Farage rate?
But on the other hand, claiming that, as mentioned, any alternatives to high immigration is bad for the country has to be BS because it does not pass the "smell test". I never understood this stance that countries must have high immigration, that high immigration is good (TM) and that anything else is bigoted and racist. Best theory is that anti-racism has mutated into a monster mixed with business interests only interested in an ever growing labour and consumers pool.
Indeed, I don't understand the "call for EU action". Not everything has to be "harmonised", letting individual countries do what they want is the default position and should remain so unless there is a very good reason not to.
"The number of UK students moving abroad for the whole of a degree did not change in the same way – remaining relatively stable over the past decade. This is perhaps unsurprising given that very few UK students study abroad for the entirety of a degree anyway (particularly in Europe), and those that do so are unlikely to have been severely disadvantaged by the financial changes wrought by Brexit: although they now have to pay ‘international’ fees in Europe, these are typically less than the ‘home’ fees they would have paid in the UK." [1]
There is also the issue of speaking a foreign language well enough to follow an university course as they are usually taught in the local language. Same goes for work.
It is useless to think that we always "have to compete" head to head. We don't have to be bigger than the bull. Frankly the argument is mostly a way to justify EU federalisation and the death of individual countries and cultures for the sake of "uniformisation" like if that was something unavoidable.
I agree that competition between peoples is counterproductive. But this is the world we live in. I also think that in large part international competition is pushed by the US as part of their culture and because they are the leading world power. In this world order, Europeans should be able to sit at the table as equals with other major powers.
Also, why does federalization have to mean the death of cultures? Can't we come up with ideas how to have both?
It is changing slowly, but the dynamics is so complex that it might as well reverse its course. In the mean time they are still dominating and will probably continue to do so over the coming decades (so for a generation or two more).
If you were an EU citizen settled in the UK before Brexit then Brexit hasn't changed anything at all.
> From the 2021/22 academic year, EU nationals became subject to the same rules as non-EU citizens. Those include needing to apply for a study visa and pay higher international student tuition fees, without entitlement to government-subsidised loans.
This is key because with Brexit, and the UK leaving Erasmus as well, EU students are indeed charged much higher tuition fees than UK students. Tuition fees are alreay high in England for British students, but for internationa students it can be £30k+ a year...
> Thanks to BYD’s new Blade Battery 2.0 and Flash Charging technology, the all-electric shooting brake can drive up to 1,036 km (644 miles) under CTLC conditions
This is what makes the longest range EV as per their claim.
The "range of nearly 500 miles" is what is going on sale in Europe.
This has obviously no merit as clearly Costco didn't "make customers pay" the tariffs. Customers freely accepted an offer to purchase as normally happens whenever someone visits a shop. Either you accept the offer or you don't but how the price is set is irrelevant.
I think that this is a standard play to seek a settlement to make the pain in the backside disappear.
> Customers freely accepted an offer to purchase as normally happens whenever someone visits a shop.
Hear me out on an alternative POV: the government engaged in lawless economic coercion, and the coercion trickled down. If you don't like it, sure, you can always go get coerced somewhere else, it's your free choice. I don't see why anyone would object to that, assuming of course they are a corporation or a government
Instead they could have mandated the use of eIDAS 1 to all countries + extend it with attribute/credential support, and let countries choose their implementation (cards, SIM, server-side).
Instead we’re back to the drawing board with the big shortcomings highlighted in this thread.
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