The People demand that the Boats are Stopped.

[noblegiraffe]

I keep reading about the Tory government working hard to deliver the people's priorities:

"Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Government are focused on five immediate priorities. We will halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut NHS waiting lists and stop the boats."

Halve inflation (will happen anyway), grow the economy (vague), reduce debt (vague), cut NHS waiting lists (maybe by paying nurses and doctors more?), stop the boats (what?).

Maybe it's just where I live, but I'm not seeing this immediate urgent need to "stop the boats". It's certainly nowhere near my top 5 priorities for the government to be immediately tackling. If it was, I'd probably look at creating legal routes for genuine asylum seekers as a first step rather than shipping them to Rwanda.

Is it in your top 5 urgent government priorities? Are they speaking to the people and I've just completely missed it?

YABU: Stopping the boats is in my top 5 government priorities.
YANBU: I'm more concerned about something else and would bump Stop the Boats down the list.

"We need to cut immigration to a few hundred highly skilled people. There's no need for unskilled labour anymore. We should not be giving any visas for trade deals."

Genuine question - the birth rate in the UK is now below replacement rate, and our population is ageing rapidly.

If we stop immigration and if people are choosing not to have children, what does the future look like for industry and for healthcare?

verdantverdure
I'd love to know the overlap between the voters who fell for those "Turkey is about to join the EU!"

To be fair - Ukraine might join the EU in 10 years' time - population nearly 44 million and the poorest country in Europe, even before the war.

izimbra
this was predicted following BREXIT, that it would be visas for trade deals...

Why are Ireland recruiting non-EU nurses?
3,500 nurses trained in Africa and other non-EU countries have been registered in Ireland this year compared to 1,400 trained here.
https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2022/11/08/action-on-worsening-situation-in-emergency-departements-urgently-required-says-inmo/
And Germany -
https://ibpastpapers.com/german-university-to-train-5000-east-african-nurses-annually/

@Florenz but that's not what is happening - of the 1.3 m unemployed- some can't work for various genuine reasons, some simply don't want to and are quite happy to do sod all regardless of what the roles pay and some are pretty unemployable in any sector. Paying a lot more in certain sectors renders the business unsustainable anyway or just drastically increases prices to all- that are already through the roof ( care being a good example) - we have to re look at the model, either care becomes massively state subsidised in order to pay people more or we have to bring people in who are happy to work in the sector for the wages on offer. If a restauarant goes bust it's not the end of the world for the general public - if care options are very very limited this becomes a problem for huge amounts of the population at some point- same applies to nurseries/child care options. Yes the ideal is that those 1.3 million would fill these empty roles but thinks like farming etc require certain things - fitness, flexibility (difficult for anyone with kids) often want you living on site- this industry has always in recent times employed a lot of casual labour.

The fact is we have again massive immigration (lots via the legal route) and personally if people voted for Brexit based on immigration - they have been sold an absolute dodo.

izimbra
In 2010 [the NHS] was deemed to be the top health service in the world in international comparisons when it came to value for money - it got more healthcare, to more people for less money than any other system of healthcare
What's happened to it under the Conservatives?

It was a comparison of 11 countries and the NHS came second overall in 2010, first overall in 2014 and 2017. The NHS didn't score so well under health outcomes in any year.

"The NHS didn't score so well under health outcomes in any year."

We have a huge problem in the NHS with late diagnosis of cancer, and poor and declining public health, which has got significantly worse under this government.

From the BMJ 2019:

"The NHS showed pockets of good performance, including in health service outcomes, but spending, patient safety, and population health were all below average to average at best. Taken together, these results suggest that if the NHS wants to achieve comparable health outcomes at a time of growing demographic pressure, it may need to spend more to increase the supply of labour and long term care and reduce the declining trend in social spending to match levels of comparator countries."

www.france24.com/en/france/20211129-french-minister-urges-uk-to-open-legal-migration-route-amid-channel-crisis

To the posters who seem to think anyone with an opinion that’s not the same as their ‘left leaning’ is some sort of hard right racist red top reading Tory - have a word with yourself. Throwing insults gets you nowhere, look at what happened with Brexit when people were accused of being ignorant racists if they wanted to leave.

Had anyone actually engaged in a debate about what was really concerning people regarding immigration, without the insults, maybe some things could have been addressed and the result could have been different. We are now in a world of pain because those with concerns weren’t heard and the only people who ‘spoke’ to them were Nigel Farage.

For the record I am a Remainer Lib Dem voter. I do think something needs to be done about this (not top 5) but it is a problem.

Who are you responding to, KCIII as I've not seen anyone calling people hard right racists here?

@KCIII

To the posters who seem to think anyone with an opinion that’s not the same as their ‘left leaning’ is some sort of hard right racist red top reading Tory

To be fair, if anyone says that 'the boats' is not high on their list of priorities, they are immediatedly branded a 'trendy lefty bleeding heart' by anyone who has an opinion that differs.

Me, I think this is a humanitarian problem rather than a party political one. However, as soon as the Parliamentary Tory Party take the postion they have, they make the problem a right-versus-left issue. God alone knows what you do if you're a broadly conservative person who think that the current Government policy on 'the boats' leaves something to be desired.

The fact we have a housing crisis where people who work can't even afford to rent anymore isn't helped by thousands more people coming into the country.

@lollipoprainbow but all governments have known that the population is growing, 10 million more people over the last 50 years, although most of those have been under the Conservative government of the last 13 years, it really isn't a new thing. The population is predicted to plateau so perhaps future policy can deal with all the issues relating to infrastructure, the NHS and education etc ?

Had anyone actually engaged in a debate about what was really concerning people regarding immigration, without the insults, maybe some things could have been addressed and the result could have been different. We are now in a world of pain because those with concerns weren’t heard and the only people who ‘spoke’ to them were Nigel Farage.

Completely disagree. It wasn't that those concerns weren't heard, it was those who held those concerns didn't want to listen to the answers because they didn't suit their entrenched bias.

Brexit was a great example, I couldn't tell you the number of times I heard it explained clearly, succinctly, articulately, and without any judgement or aggression that voting for Brexit would not result in a change to immigration into the UK because immigration to the UK was (and is) controlled by the UK. That has always been 100% true for non-eu migration and even when we were subject to the free movement of people in the EU there were a raft of conditions that meant we could control inward migration so that it was not detrimental to the country.

But people who felt immigration was out of control didn't want to hear it and didn't want to hold the government in power accountable for their actions (or in this case in action). They didn't want an actual explanation as to why things were they way they were and what would need to happen to change things, they want a three word slogan, a promise of action (although never a deadline for it), and someone to point the finger at (in Brexits case a mixture of migrants taking jobs).

There's only so many times you can explain something to someone before you think "fuck this, they're either deliberately ignoring me or are unable to understand the issue".

The Tories have had majority control over immigration for over 13 years and sole control since 2015. They've made promises and had the power to properly look at and tackle any immigration issues but have instead chosen to defunded border control, the armed forces, the police, and the asylum/immigration service during that time.

Do those who now think immigration is an issue hold them to account for their failures? Of course not! There's a brand new slogan and a brand new migrant class to hate so all is forgiven, after all they'll surely follow through with their promises this time.....

There's only so many times you can explain something to someone before you think "fuck this, they're either deliberately ignoring me or are unable to understand the issue".

The Tories have had majority control over immigration for over 13 years and sole control since 2015. They've made promises and had the power to properly look at and tackle any immigration issues but have instead chosen to defunded border control, the armed forces, the police, and the asylum/immigration service during that time

Yes, all of this- completely agree

@Thebestwaytoscareatory absolutely correct- people were told, it was explained in great detail- but a great many didn't like what they were hearing and preferred Farages nonsense of let's blame all the UKs ills on the EU and foreigners rather than poor policies or long term planning and plenty of those not wanting to do much voted for this shit show too .how many times do farmers or businesses have to say that they were not deliberately picking foreigners for jobs, it was that they were not getting enough applicants that were not foreigners- or people turned up for 1 shift and then couldn't be arsed etc! it wasn't that they got a bonus for every Polish girl they employed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2022/summary-of-latest-statistics

This is a really interesting read and explains who is coming to the UK.

Farmers were not deliberately picking foreigners for jobs, they were just paying wages and providing working conditions that no British person was prepared to accept. Not to mention expecting workers to live in shoddy accommodation on site that they had their wages docked to pay for.

I view the boats issue a manufactured crisis by govt to deflect from the many serious issues that need addressing - underfunded NHS and social care, education, inflated housing crisis, soaring levels of inequality between super rich and everyone else.

Manufactured crisis as the numbers of asylum applications (majority of people coming by by boats are asylum seekers) are not as high as they have been other times in the last 20 years. Govt have caused a backlog in processing asylum applications.

Exactly. Most adults can now only buy their own home with parental help, there is not enough social housing and private rents are so high, most young adults can only afford to rent with friends. We haven't got the infra structure to cope with the thousands of boat people coming in. And for those saying the UK doesn't accept as many as other countries, perhaps the housing, health and education sectors in those countries aren't in the same parlous state as ours. Comparisons aren't helpful here. And if you check what is happening in previously law abiding towns and cities in Sweden since their 'everyone is welcome' policy was implemented, you'll see what the terrible results of it are. Our government definitely hasn't done enough for education, health and education, but we just can't afford for so many boat people to come here.

*should be inflated house prices above

I do want to stop the boats, but only by improving safe and legal entry routes into the UK.

My main concern with it is the safety and wellbeing of assylum seekers.

We haven't got the infra structure to cope with the thousands of boat people coming in

What about the thousands coming in from Hong Kong?

Agree.

So you live in a poverty stricken area and one of your priorities is not inward investment, opportunity, healthcare etc, it’s whinging about brown people.

if you want to stop the boats, it’s easy. Provide safe and legal routes, process the refugees, deport the bogus ones, let the legitimate ones work for a living. I can guarantee they won’t want to live where you live. Problem solved.

That's like saying the way to stop murder is to make murder legal.

We are absolutely within our rights to control who is and isn't allowed to come into the country. There's no reason for us to take any number or even any refugees at all, the world is a big place, we already have taken far more than is fair, the UK is a tiny country, less than a 2000th of the world's area.

And the tories didn’t oppose it because they saw that businesses could take advantage of cheap labour to expand.