To think the Guardian is a joke re: JK Rowling?

[Firesidefox]

So, the Guardian was running a 'person of the year' poll, and I voted for JK Rowling for her bravery in standing up to the extremist wing of the trans lobby.

I went to have a look to see when the results were out, and they've deactivated the poll! According to Twitter, it's because JK Rowling was the out and out winner.

If this is the case, this is PATHETIC.

More came than expected but there wasn't an increase in unemployment or lower wages.

Public services? Go look at the Nuffield college Oxford study on the impact on the NHS, LSE, UCL and more.

What actually happened was lots of stories came out in the right wing media which weren't true.

Most in fact the vast majority of EU citizens were here, paying tax and registered.

Most places that voted leave had very little immigration between 2004 and 2016, but spouted the lines anyway cause it was out there in the media.

The fact is that as this debate shows, you can talk about the realities of the impacts or immigration and use facts to do so, and people will still disagree because it doesn't confirm their bias.

From your favourite newspaper - also November 2007;

The debate over immigrant children in Britain's schools was reignited this weekend after the country's leading headteachers told The Observer that rising numbers of foreign pupils are putting some schools near breaking point because they do not have the resources to cope. ...

Last year 96 children who did not speak English unexpectedly joined primary schools in Boston, Lincolnshire, alone, more than doubling the number attending the previous year. ...

Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow with the IPPR, said it was time for the government to reassess the provision of English language teaching to migrant pupils. 'The main need of migrant children is to learn English,' Rutter said. 'But funding of English language learning is just not keeping pace with the number of migrant children entering British schools...

www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/25/politics.schools

Yes and then go read the councils report from 2012.

Just quoting old am data is ridiculous.

Also if you are going to c and p provide the link there is no way of knowing that you haven't left bits out or cut off early.

What actually happened was lots of stories came out in the right wing media which weren't true

The Daily Mirror -

Boston in Lincolnshire is the most murderous place in England and Wales.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/murder-capital-britain-revealed-its-7225784

That is desperate.

I note you still quote from 2007 and not the later 2012 document from Boston Council.

So it appears if there were impacts they were in some isolated areas and were redressed quickly.

You left bits out of the article you quoted like the government pledge to increase funding, which the Council doc from later shows they got.

Question. Why are you using the most extreme example in order to prove a point about the whole country?

Most areas that voted leave had very little immigration so would have felt no impact.

Many other areas that voted remain had higher immogration

Mirror article 2016. Obviously faked by some random on the internet.

It's an interesting point though.

I think its really an appeal to reason. Even in Boston it shows that the schools were doing fine by 2012.so if there were pressure they were dealt with (by the extra funding that you missed out of your article).

In reality most leave voting places saw no extra pressure on services at all and it just became a thing people said.

And yes this was discussed in the run up to the referendum, and again people ignored the points that they didn't like.

Like insaid Sunderland experienced population falling but there are interviews with people during the campaign who cite the "pressure on services" stuff.

@TeaAndStrumpets

Desperate because it doesn't actually represent the facts. A year previously North Wales was the most murderous place in the Uk, because it measures the number of events to 100,000 people. Its hardly a relative example, also its not known if these murders and threats were due to immigrants or 8f the rate is grater than before 2004.

So it's desperate.

A question for the experts here. Up to 1.3 million EU citizens left the UK between July 2019 and September 2020.
From the HMRC annual report for April 2020 to March 2021, I can't see any drop in the Income Tax and National Insurance collected.
Any explanation gratefully received.

I think JK is an incredible woman.

@blameless

Was kept more or less the same by furlough. Many EU workers will have still had these payments, there is a 400 m drop in income tax.

Although I think you might implying it doesn't have an impact on tax take.you are forgetting that EU citizens also include students and other groups.

@JohnHuffam1812

Income tax for the past 5 years is £174m, £186m, £194m, £194m and £192m. I was very surprised when I saw the figures.

While I accept that people may have arrived with children and elderly parents, these published figures suggest that those who came and went did not pay much income tax. You have challenged anecdata, this is objective, audited and published information.

Those who came to make a new life in the UK may well be high earners paying a lot of tax, but it is disingenuous to suggest that there was no impact on the poorest in society (wherever they were born) from those exercising their rights to temporarily visit, work and occupy some of our disgracefully insufficient housing supply.

My own take is that many of those coming for work may have been treated very badly by gangmasters or those trafficking cheap labour. In the South East, I can get my car washed by hand for £5 and people recoil if payment is offered to anyone but the boss - I can see no way that pays the UK minimum wage, never mind other employer costs.

We can do this all day but my point still stands - why can’t the left acknowledge these things fully? What are they concerned about?

The LP really stopped being a leftist party as such and became a party of global liberalism, with their core constituency being the urban university educated middle classes. So their policies reflect that - while they kindly include state supported interventions for the poor at the most basic level they are supporters of global capitalism and corporatism, movement of labour and the movable workforce, and a an individualist approach to social values and social meaning.

That has never been a terribly appealing combination to the working classes, but LP members tend not to be able to see why, because it's what they imagine they would want in the same position.

Most of the various individual areas of disagreement like immigration or whether the nation-state should be the basic lever of power come out of these more basic differences in the way those voting contingencies think about things.

@blameless

The stats you quote are questionable for one, in what I can find its workers who were foriegn born not EU. Although EU immigration seems to have been negative for the first time for years, the numbers don't seem to be as large as you suggest.

Housing supply is a national issue, and the ONS and Oxford Migration Observatory provide stats on immigration and its impact on housing.

In reality, the housing issues are due to the UK's privatisation of housing supply since the 1980s since when we have underbuilt by 200,000 dwellings or so per year. Made worse by an ageing population, changing demographics in terms of people living in single occupancy households, split families and more.

@SantaClawsServiette

I utterly disagree with your post about the LP. The ONLY party offering the working classes things that would support them in the last election was the Labour party.

The narrative you spout is one that comes directly from the internet and ignores actual policies.

Its really funny that you talk about supporters of global capitalism and copratism, because that is what you have with the Tories. The drive for brexit was all about the ability to deregulate enough to maximise profits some more.

Sorry but its just unjustifiable bollocks.

JK deffo won.

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly

There was no poll.

@JohnHuffam1812 🤣

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly
That’s just made my night. 🤣

[quote JohnHuffam1812]@blameless

The stats you quote are questionable for one, in what I can find its workers who were foriegn born not EU. Although EU immigration seems to have been negative for the first time for years, the numbers don't seem to be as large as you suggest.

Housing supply is a national issue, and the ONS and Oxford Migration Observatory provide stats on immigration and its impact on housing.

In reality, the housing issues are due to the UK's privatisation of housing supply since the 1980s since when we have underbuilt by 200,000 dwellings or so per year. Made worse by an ageing population, changing demographics in terms of people living in single occupancy households, split families and more.[/quote]
The stats were an estimate (ONS quoted 893,737, the methodology was queried and Jonathan Portes adjusted it to 1,293,828) in this document (www.escoe.ac.uk/estimating-the-uk-population-during-the-pandemic/) widely reported in places such as (www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/17/number-of-eu-citizens-seeking-work-in-uk-falls-36-since-brexit-study-shows).

So they were an estimate, which is different to the ones I've read which were net migration.

The Jonathan Portes data seems to refer to non UK workers as a whole not EU. It also acknowledges several difficulties with the methodology. Not representing what you said initially. It actually is based on research which says: "In a report that suggests tougher post-Brexit immigration rules are having a distinct impact above and beyond the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, the sharp decline in interest among EU jobseekers was not replicated in other countries."

So its not about resident workers.

Doesn't link with your claims about tax take, so no, no your data doesn't match the claims.

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly

JK deffo won.

Do you know that is fake created by mole at the counter? He is brilliant at faking pictures etc. she should win anyway!

[quote Gumbomambo]@HoliHormonalTigerlilly
That’s just made my night. 🤣[/quote]
This is what the Guardian would really like to say. I think Mole has the gift of seeing into people's souls, like Layla Moran

@Rhannion yes thanks 👌

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly

JK deffo won.

👍😀