To think Lowe is going to wipe the floor with Farage?

[BlueJuniper94]

Just that. AIBU to think this is the end of Farage?

I didn’t say it wasn’t the case I said it doesn’t mean much.

Except this is nonsense isn’t it, there isn’t a pie that billionaires are taking too much of. You can’t tax your way to growth. Jobs, reasonably priced housing and reasonably priced energy is what gets an economy moving, people employed and earnings growing.

A giant welfare state does not create growth.

Because resources are already stretched and there has been a lot of media around new arrivals being given things locals can’t access. GP appts, NHS dentists, social housing etc.

How could you not be resentful if you’re in an area affected? I can see where the anger comes from (whether it’s justified or not).

I think it’s trying to understand people and why they vote the way they do rather than just labelling everyone. This country has serious failures across the board and people are seemingly getting angrier.

It allows people to come at the issue with perceived academic authority and ignore any lived experiences if it doesn’t fit their world view.

Possibly, but my argument would be that many of the jobs that immigrants do, our own unemployed won’t.

I manage a recruitment business, which heavily focusses on health care assistants for some of our SENd jobs. We also employ school cleaners, lunchtime staff, catering assistants.

I would estimate we fill those roles with 90% overseas candidates - we advertise them to everyone. Jobs need filling, and if UK born UC claimants don’t want them, they’ll still have to be filled.

We also can’t complain about people coming and being a resource drain, and also complain about them working.

Ruper Lowe is a racist idiot.
Those who have had dealings with him in the past all know that.

It’s a pattern that keeps repeating and I think its testament to the fact that people who are living in deprived areas are feeling unheard and left behind, but also suggests that they lack the understanding to recognise when they are being manipulated to vote against their own interests. So actually, I think it means quite a lot

Mainly because the area I’m from isn’t affected in any of the ways you’ve just described.

It doesn’t matter how much I’m told an immigrant is stealing my doctor if I can get a routine Drs appointment within a week or so.

And that’s before we consider that it’s not an immigrants fault that the services we’re talking about are underfunded and have been for decades.

The fears of the WC have always been sneered at by those favouring right wing politics.
If WC people have poor quality of life they're told they should "get off their arses, work harder and better themselves."
If they live in substandard overcrowded accommodation they should have "made better life choices".
If they are poor and need welfare support they are "scroungers".
When anyone states the blindingly obvious, that the policies that would help WC people involve investment of public money in the services they use, the improvement of their neighbourhoods, plus additional money in their pockets, they are "a drain on the hardworking high earning tax payer".
When anyone suggests any sort of levelling up, then they're being given unfair advantage over a middle class child.
The only issue on which right wing parties "listen to the WC" is when pockets of them are persuaded that the cause of their disadvantage is immigration, and they can engage them in call and response.

I don’t think they are, they want something to change and they’re using votes to get it. It’s actually working pretty well so far, even with Labour in power.

But that’s the issue; just because you’re okay doesn’t mean everyone is.

If we don’t have the money for funding (which we don’t as proven during this govt) then something has to give. We can’t keep a bloated welfare state forever and adding to the population if those people aren’t contributing enough. We already have enough low income and unemployed natives.

Harsh but that’s the country at the moment. We really are a tipping point financially it seems.

@Bringemout Bllionares are paying very little tax though, aren’t they? Jim Ratcliffe moved to Monaco to avoid it. It’s greed. Nobody needs that amount of money. Why do you think that most people who are speaking out publicly about immigrants are filthy rich or taking bribes? ‘’Don’t look over here’’ 🤣

They're out to enrich themselves further, the lot of them.

Well, as I posted above - the business I work for has vacancies that can’t be filled with native low earners/unemployed, because they don’t want them.

We don’t advertise specifically to overseas candidates, we market and advertise to everyone, and I cannot stress enough that the reason those vacancies aren’t filled by natives is because of lack of interest.

I’d recommend doing something about that before we start taking people who are working out of the workforce.

I’d also point out the majority of overseas candidates that we employ how no recourse to publics funds, so they’re not claiming benefits and sitting around, they’re working challenging jobs that some of those on UC won’t do.

I don’t disagree, tbf I have seen Rupert Lowe actually say there are a bunch of people in the Uk who need to be shoved into a job.

I think the problem is you can have 1 earner in a household which then qualifies a family for a raft of welfare which far outstrips your financial contributions. I do think British people need to suck it up and just get a bloody job and stop thinking things are beneath them.

I think the thing that a lot of people miss is that high levels of immigration was very much a right wing economic thing for a long time. Right wingers like open flexible labour markets because of simple supply and demand. When you reduce labour availability wages go up. It’s become a left wing thing because of social justice sentiments but the old left wingers would have been able to correctly identify that labour market manipulation by massively increasing the supply of labour would only really benefit the wealthy. Lower wages and they would be insulted from the social costs of more competition from finite resources like school places, reasonably priced housing, healthcare etc.

It’s only recently people have started believing stupid things like “high immigration has no impact on wages and housing costs”.

I’m pro immigration but sensible and targeted immigration. There is nothing wrong with a surge of immigration when required if it is accompanied by an actual plan around school places, infrastructure etc.

But then billionaires are using immigrants to suppress wages and reduce the natives ability to negotiate better working pay. The govt literally prop up min wage with working credits which benefits the billionaires. If you look into the money being made by the companies profiteering off immigration (especially illegal crossings) it’s insanely eye watering.

So as always, I see both sides are as bad as each other for the average working person. It’s why I don’t attach myself to any particular party.

100% agree.

I'm fairly confident that Farage and his mates aren't going to do anything that stops billionaires exploiting people. If the pool of immigrants to exploit dries up another pool be found to replace them. And guess who's going to be in it?

Both things can be true at the same time. There could be an issue with Asian gangs being particularly well organised but, bearing in mind they are only 7% of the population, it could also be true that they do not make up the majority of grooming gangs, given the figures that I shared. Possibly, if you have a very specific definition of grooming gangs that is different from the definition used for the figures I had, that may skew towards a higher percentage of Pakistani gangs. That’s not the same thing as Pakistani gangs outnumbering other gangs though. Unless you have some actual data to show otherwise.

Did I say Farage would?

No I didn’t. But I stand by my point that over saturating the markets will keep wages suppressed.

Disabled people. They have already started demonising those and planting seeds but it hasn’t quite got off the ground at break neck speed yet while they can still concentrate on immigration. Then it will be all benefit claimants, single mothers, LGBTQ.

Labour mostly have been doing what they said to be fair. You wouldn't know it from the press but this is a good resource...

https://fullfact.org/government-tracker/

Oh some of the most racist people I have ever met had very well paid jobs and a lovely home in the Cotswolds.

There's a lot of bait and switch re immigration and small boats. One moment they will be talking about overall migration figures and how the UK is being "colonised". When you bring up footballers suddenly it's " they didn't come over in small boats". Ok but neither did most of the immigrants previously listed as a problem.

It's very very hard now to apply for asylum in the UK while abroad. It's also harder than before to come into the UK via regular methods (airplane etc) and then apply for asylum once here because the UK is careful not to give travel visas to people who might have an asylum case. But the harder you make getting to the UK, the greater the proportion of people who make it will be young adult men. The same way that the majority of people capable of completing a difficult obstacle course will be young men.
Basically - its a symptom of the UKs "success" in cracking down on other forms of asylum migration that so many (although not all) that make it are young men. That doesn't mean they aren't deserving. And in order to process their applications you need to house and feed them. The people pushing these narratives in the telegraph will be completely aware of this even if the people getting upset about it aren't. It's deliberate dishonesty.

And that's not even mentioning the ones who were allowed into the UK because they helped us in Afghanistan and the government accidentally leaked their details putting them at risk of Taliban reprisals. A fuck up for sure. But not a colonisation.

The biggest things they campaigned on pre GE were fully funded, fully costed, smash the gangs and growth not job losses.

That’s why they’re struggling.

You think Epstein didn't operate in the UK?

The trick is to do it at the same time..so you say "British people are fed up of being colonised and suffering in poverty while money goes on new arrivals.... Also as a high earner I am sick on of paying tax to support the feckless poor". It links the issues in people's mind and means you can step from one to t'other gracefully. And noone notices that the victims in the first sentence (unsupported British poor) are the demons in the second.