Rwanda plan

[AdamRyan]

Was just reading Suella Bravermans thoughts on how to make the Rwanda plan work, which involve sending staff there to review claims and pulling out of all human rights and refugee conventions.

The plan has cost £140m to Rwanda so far, plus £££££ in legal fees and so far we've sent no-one and found out its illegal. I'm very baffled as to why the government are pursuing it, I keep hearing that "most people" support it. So I thought I'd ask:

IABU: It's a priority as it will deter immigration and the government should spend whatever money and time it takes to deliver this

IANBU: The government should focus time/money on other priorities instead.

Is there any evidence your suggested policy will lift wages? I'd love to see wages in the care sector rise.
But given social care has been made the statutory responsibility of local government I can only see that working if the Government reverse the cuts to central funding and allow LG to raise more money from things like council tax. I don't see the appetite from the Government.

So I think is it more likely that the vast number of vacant positions will increase and force families (particularly women) to make difficult choices regarding their own employment choices.

@EasternStandard

Yes that was part of it

But I find the term privilege irritating

LAs are only responsible for some social care. If you can pay, you have to. You sort out your own social care. I know. I’ve just arranged it for a relative at £5000 a month. Many long serving staff and it’s a happy place. You sell your house to pay for it in the end. I can see why some don’t like the job but we have lots of unfilled vacancies and lots not working.

Surely, you wouldn't like your relative being cared for by someone who doesn't really want to do the job?

I have no doubt there are good care homes.

I just want to understand how think wages will be forced up.

"Care home bosses are demanding the next government funds a 44% pay rise for frontline staff to stabilise the crisis-hit sector and boost a system that is “in an extremely precarious state”.
Care England, whose members include the largest care home chains, is calling for the next prime minister to set a £15-per-hour minimum wage for care workers as part of a £10bn a year support package. There are currently over 152,000 vacant posts, 430,000 people are on care waiting lists and scores of facilities are rated inadequate in the care"

Article goes on to suggest care homes should be funding part of this rise themselves (which I agree with).

But I don't see the will to do it.

It's a long term mess and it's been left to fester.

Suggesting the long term unemployed are automatically fit to look after vulnerable adults and children is in my opinion nonsense - would you want your vulnerable child or adult left in the care of people forced by the state to do what is an incredibly important and sensitive job? As the parent of a disabled teen I would be extremely concerned.

My prediction is that vacancies will increase. Which means that the pressures on hospitals increase as fewer patients can be discharged. Which means more ambulances waiting. Etc.

Failure to properly fund social care, to require higher wages, to provide opportunities for meaningful career progression has led to where we are now.

By all means cut off flow of carers - when there is a proper plan in place to provide care.

Excerpt taken from amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/19/uk-care-home-bosses-demand-next-government-funds-44-pay-rise-for-staff

There’s an assumption that people not working are not capable of working in care homes. There’s a variety of work. I know no one will be forced but we then cannot complain about immigration.

I don’t think most people realise how much care costs each year. It’s way above fees for Eton! Local Authorities pay far less so you are really penalized if you have savings and have downsized from a house. I think homes with fewer LA residents pay better as the higher fees go towards better wages.

However we have to recognise we are an aging nation and we will need more care. Having seen the difficulties of old age, dh and me would rather go on our own terms!

AI uses more compute power and more water than any other kind of computing. It causes the emission of a lot of greenhouse gases.

A continued rise in the use of AI is going to make these problems worse, not better

https://www.context.news/climate-risks/what-are-the-environmental-costs-of-ai

"Japan isn’t the uk. It’s one example. They are nearly twice the size of us".

That's not an argument against the point I was making about the link between immigration and economic growth, and I'm going to guess you haven't listen to the podcast I linked to which explores this issue.

"Unfortunately our wages have stagnated and we are paying more tax and with so many feeling the pinch, there isn’t more money."

If policy decisions like allowing the healthcare system to collapse result in many fewer people being able to stay in the workplace this will have a big impact on productivity. It already is. You're suggesting we willingly submit to a economic death spiral and a race to the bottom. And you think the answer is to push more people into destitution through benefit cuts, with all the terrible costs to society and to public health that this results in.

And not everyone would agree with you when it comes to the 'household budget' theory of economics. If they did we wouldn't have created the NHS or most of the social housing infrastructure of this country in the late 1940's or early 1950's

https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/19/thatchers-household-fallacy-led-to-austerity-and-killed-thousands-what-was-the-point-of-it/

FWIW - There are vast amounts of wealth in the UK and large amounts of income being generated from it. Far more than ever before, and yet the tax burden is falling more and more on ordinary people paying PAYE on their salaries. By way of example - over the past 3 years Rishi Sunak has earned £4.7 million pounds. He paid £1.053 million in taxes, which gives him an effective tax rate of 22%. We have many extremely wealthy people in the UK in this position, paying less tax on their income than shop workers. Maybe look into the arguments for a wealth tax.

We are not allowed to tax the wealthy because then they might move to another country, whilst simaltaneously hating migrants.

Please don't start on the over a million empty homes in the UK, it is communist apparently to suggest that massive inequaltiy is a huge problem facing the UK.

Water usage or other isn’t going to stop increase in use of AI so immigration needs will change.

In the same way migration pressures will increase in next decade or so

Both are inevitable

"There’s an assumption that people not working are not capable of working in care homes. There’s a variety of work. I know no one will be forced"

The biggest cause of people claiming disability benefits is mental illness and bad backs. People on long term benefits may have a poor work record, complicated lives with caring responsibilities, a history of incarceration, poor physical health and a lack of basic skills. Many of the jobs that are hard to fill are seasonal or don't offer guaranteed hours. Some are physically very tough - delivery and warehouse work. Care work is both physically and emotionally hard. You can legislate to push these people into work by threatening benefit sanctions, but you can't force employers to offer jobs to people with poor work records through ill health or other reasons.

People are scared to come off benefits because of the difficulty of going back on them if a job falls through - housing is such a disaster at the moment that losing a job could be utterly catastrophic for a family and result in them not only being left reliant on foodbanks, but also facing long term homelessness. Destitution is real! The research into foodbank use suggests the use of benefit sanctions has created more food insecurity in the UK.

"Please don't start on the over a million empty homes in the UK, it is communist apparently to suggest that massive inequaltiy is a huge problem facing the UK."

Only 0.9% of homes in England are long term empty. That compares to 8% in France and 4% in Germany. Having spare capacity in the housing market pushes prices down and makes the housing system work better. We have the lowest number of empty homes in the OECD and the worst housing situation. It's completely dysfunctional.

That said - the corporate takeover of our housing market is a disaster. It's happening in the US as well, and it needs to be stopped or aggressively regulated, like it is in places like Germany. We need a strong rental market but renters need the protection of long leases and legislation preventing no fault evictions and random rent rises.

In the meantime our political illiterate electorate - the part of it that's suffered the most from terrible Tory policy making, are looking at parties like Reform UK and genuinely not understanding that it's a right wing libertarian party intent on trashing all employment regulation and destroying all our systems of social welfare.

Berlin seems to be having a tough time for renters anyway

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlins-renters-face-more-misery-housing-crisis-deepens-2023-11-16/

Where did you get the 0.9% figure from?

The government's own figures when I last looked were 700,000 in England, but that may be out of date, and is likely an undercounting for a variety of reasons.

@izimbra since you’ve enjoyed the podcast you may appreciate a listen to Sarah Harper director at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing on R4.

She talks briefly about the idea AI / tech could change immigration needs. She’s a good listen anyway but one of the few to connect ageing population needs and incoming AI

https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/why-we-need-more-empty-homes-to-end-the-housing-crisis/

The flaw in their analysis is in assuming that the only empty homes are those that are registered as empty for council tax. Since many councils charge double the council tax on homes that are empty long term many people with an empty home do not tell the council (Not so long ago empty homes had reduced council tax). The true figure for long term empty homes is likely to be much higher, with many of them bought as investments, often by overseas buyers.

What is interesting however, is that even if we accept a million empty homes, the percentage of empty homes in the UK is little different from other Western countries, which I was not aware of.

Also, the percentage doesn’t really matter. It’s whether we have enough homes for the population and then whether we’re letting the empty homes lie empty for the benefit of billionaires or press them into service so that even if we get six homeless people off the street with a room each and shared kitchen, we’ve got six homeless people off the street (repeat for asylum seekers, refugees, immigrant workers etc). The public services and housing problem is that they haven’t been grown commensurate with population growth. For a reductio ad absurdum, what if we’d built exactly enough homes for 60 million? There are now 70 million at least in the UK and the government has built no new homes. In that context even 1% empty houses only punished by what to a millionaire is small change is still a disgrace.

The chairman of the Local Government Association (who is also a Labour councillor) asks the same stupid question here;

"We've got a housing shortage, we've got a huge demand on temporary accommodation, and we've got councils in financial strain," Mr Davies, who is also a Labour councillor in Telford, said.

Mr Davies questioned where local governments were supposed to house refugees once they became councils' responsibilities.

While hotels were not a "long-term solution" for housing refugees, Mr Davies said the question had to be, "If not those hotels, then where?"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67212103

You posted after I said I was going out and to be fair, you asked for a location - not links to a specific test. My 'examples' were not examples, just the default page.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page in my link it says;

Looking to work, study, or live in the UK?
If you need a visa for working or studying in the UK, then in some cases you may need to take IELTS for UK Visas and Immigration or IELTS Life Skills.

Then in the link;
... demonstrate that you have met the required level of English by taking a Home Office approved Secure English Language Test (SELT), such as IELTS for UKVI (Academic and General Training) or IELTS Life Skills...

We offer IELTS for UKVI in Yaoundé in Cameroon

IELTS for UKVI (Academic) appears to be the test required by the GMC (taken in person at the test centre);

https://www.britishcouncil.cm/exam/ielts/which-test/uk-visas-immigration

Then click book now and follow links;

IELTS for UKVI Academic (top of page) Find a test;
https://ieltsregistration.britishcouncil.org/ukvi/find-test

Helpfully IELTS have there [sic] own website where you can select a country and the nice box for UKVI approved. Feel free to have a go for Cameroon and report back what you find.

Yes - I've clicked the nice little box;

Showing 2 results for Cameroon

Both centres UKVI approved:

https://ielts.org/test-centres?country=cmr&city=all&ukvi=true&expanded=false

https://ielts.org/test-centres/british-council-djeuga-palace-hotel

https://ielts.org/test-centres/british-council-elfa-cameroon-centre

NB I'm going out soon...

Tbh the interesting question is whether Rishi Sunak will make migration the leading issue at the next election.

I mean on the current polls this policy is a disaster, but I think could actually get worse for them. If you are hard line on migration then yes, but I think the vast majority of voters are not, and their engagement is going to be in the order of "what has the Government done". No good story there.

And by the sounds of it Nigel Farage will do exactly that so we are headed for an election that will feel much more American in tone than previous ones.

Sunak is cosying up with Italy PM Meloni to stop the UK getting overwhelmed by illegal immigration.

He is forgetting that claiming asylum is not illegal and only 7% of total immigration, but then he does have problems remembering things

Other guests at this Brothers for Italy party include Orban and Bannon

It is rather an odd look someone who has been a migrant complaining about migrants.
Or is it that they are the wrong kind of migrant?

Presumably like the NatC conference in the Spring soon posters will be offended by being reminded of this event?