AIBU to hope the greens do very well today?

[ForGreenHiker]

That’s it really. go Zack! 💚

But seeing as we don’t want to kill off our elderly and infirm (although the government are giving it their best shot but that’s another story), we can’t meaningfully reduce those costs but we can limit the number of new people having demand on services.

My comment was in response to PPs claim that most immigrants are healthy. The rise in diseases we had beaten here years ago says otherwise. Unfortunately actual figures are hard to come by because the government is averse to holding such information. There is also the question if £hundreds of millions of unbilled medical expenses from visitors. We seem to be very poor at charging people ineligible for free NHS care.

TB is just one disease that is having a resurgence, there are many others. There is also the matter of immigrant families with cultural norms of marrying first cousins creating a much higher level of severe congenital abnormality and very unreliable billing for patients ineligible for free NHS.

The huge numbers of refugees are eligible for full free NHS including dental care and there were many examples of GPs and providers visiting the asylum hotels providing free treatment even to those who are actually just economic migrants and eventually get asylum refused.

You may feel that each element is a ‘miniscule amount’ but it all adds up. And it’s all money that arguably we can’t afford right now due to the load on the NHS of our own citizens. If we had loads of spare capacity then I might agree that we can afford to treat all comers but we don’t.

But a strong, stable, well-managed country should be able to handle immigration without falling to pieces.

But that’s not what we are at the moment. And pulling in an unlimited amount more people isn’t going to fix anything. It’s just going to make it worse.

BTW, we don't live in a country where we have huge expanses of land suitable for building, or for growing crops if it comes to that. We can't keep building more homes while the population increases, we don't grow enough food as it is, and our native wildlife is being pushed to the limits because of habitat loss.
More and more people on a country made up of small islands is going to end up in disaster. Too late then .

So we agree? We need a government that's focused on fixing the root causes and doesn't just blame all the issues on immigrants? And acts like stopping immigration will fix it all?

Still waiting for the Green surge....
Seems that social media noise does not correlate to actual votes. Who would have thought?

So common sense prevailed and ZP will not be influencing county and city councils across the UK. Thank goodness for that. 🤗

But women CANT have penises you numpty?! Jesus, THIS is who is voting for ZP. Thank God the greens, as predicted, have not done well in the local elections. Political party of clowns. Who TF even votes for them...

This.

The Green Party is full of antisemitic people who are happy to share their hatred online for everyone to see, like a badge of honour. Vile.

The self ID for gender ended SNP leader, a few years ago, and should end any prospect for anyone so dumb, as to erase women's rights for men further.

Criticism of police for having the nerve to tackle a vile attacker was stupid. Imagine that ridiculousness in charge.

If they actually return to environmental issues I think they'd get more votes.

The thing is, the Greens campaigning locally have made no reference at all to the national party’s policies. Our Green candidates are very sensible people campaigning on clean waterways, biodiversity, access to green spaces, public transport and active school travel. I can see why a lot of people would want to vote for them.

Not really.

You seem to think that having to deal with housing, treating and managing (language, teaching them our laws and in some notable cases the concept of consent for sex, skills, driving lessons etc) large numbers of people from cultures very different to our own while also dealing with disgruntled born and bred citizens that are experiencing significant detriment in their lives due to the above situation is not going to be a huge distraction to getting these root causes fixed and I disagree.

For one example, the building of new houses has not kept up with demand by some margin over the last 20 years. Do you think it is going to help or hinder the situation to significantly increase the demand by adding hundreds of thousands of new people to the housing lists each year? (As other PPs have raised on similar threads, the ONS predicts that net migration will come down to around 350,000 per year longer term)

Do you think it is going to improve the disgruntlement of local residents on the housing lists for years seeing refugees apparently getting priority? This may or may not be more of a perception than an actual statistical majority based on the visibility in areas where recent immigrants are getting new build council houses, but the fine details don’t help the feelings of a British born and bred citizen living in unsuitable accommodation for years being unable to move because someone new to the country has turned up with more eligibility points. That isn’t xenophobia or racism, just human nature.

And housing is just one of very many examples. If the government is worried about the increased threat of Islamic terrorism, they are going to have less time to work on other things.

I said reducing immigration could be a temporary measure while the root causes are fixed.

There is no argument for turning away refugees. We can reduce illegal migration by concentrating on the statistically larger issue of people who enter legally and then overstay their VISAs.

There is enough housing for everyone in this country physically, but it is mismanaged. We need to make being a landlord less profitable and buy up the houses to use as social housing. This will both increase the housing available to those who need social homes, as well as increase rights for those who prefer to rent.

That does sound like an attractively simple solution at first glance but if I have understood your proposal correctly, I think it would fall at the first hurdle. Even the ‘ban all landlords’ Greens have private landlords among their number so the political will is very likely to be lacking.

Then you start thinking about the practicalities. Basically you are proposing to crash (or put very serious brakes onto) the property market in order to remove private landlords from the equation and then further government to buy up millions of individual properties.

Imagine the man hours involved in processing so many house purchase transactions and also guard against the very real issue of mass fraud (always a major feature in huge government financial undertakings like that). Then the admin overhead of the state becoming landlord to millions of previously private tenants (11 million people across 5 million odd properties) .

Then we have the wider financial effects involving things like pensions - both where an individual has bought rental properties as a pension and the huge pension funds that have a stake in large scale property companies etc - that needs to be dealt with.

There is no argument for turning away refugees. We can reduce illegal migration by concentrating on the statistically larger issue of people who enter legally and then overstay their VISAs.

I’m not sure that turning away actual refugees has been proposed by anyone. Obviously we need to get much better at deporting those ineligible to stay and cracking down on the widespread immigration fraud recently exposed by the BBC. We seem to be thwarted at every turn by the ‘human rights’ lawyers.

We absolutely can send all asylum seekers to a safe country, say Rwanda for example, to be processed at far lower cost than we are currently spending. We then have cheaper accommodation, a good deterrent for the economic migrants, terrorists and criminal fugitives with no risk of absconding or murdering one of us and then only take the very clear cut genuine asylum seekers without pressure to rush the process. Win.

No you've completely mischaracterised what I've suggested. I'm going to bow out now as this isn't the first time you've mischaracterised (purposefully or not) what I've said, and then argued with that, rather than what I actually said. Honestly I saw you were arguing in bad faith when you asked if I wanted the government to buy drugs from criminals as if it was some kind of gotcha, and ignored the part of the research that didn't support what you were saying, but I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. At some point one has to stop arguing with people who only hear what they want to hear.

The FPTP system takes a lot of votes to get break
through.

True, but we have Reform doing it instead.

I don’t think they have overall control in a lot of places due to many councils only having a proportion of council seats up for election.

Oh Greens finally won a council: Norwich, from NOC.

According to the BBC as of now Reform has the highest number of council seats in England:
949 in total with Lib Dems at 642, Labour at 613, Conservatives 526,
Green 300, Independents 109. Only 93 of 136 councils have completed their counts but if the pattern continues Reform comes out on top and can cause havoc even if they don't have complete control.😡
The Greens have won two mayoralties in London ... 😡

You said this: We need to make being a landlord less profitable and buy up the houses to use as social housing. This will both increase the housing available to those who need social homes, as well as increase rights for those who prefer to rent.

Can you explain how I have mischaracterised what you said? I am honestly just responding to what you said with my thoughts on how it could work (or not) - what did you mean that is different?

Honestly I saw you were arguing in bad faith when you asked if I wanted the government to buy drugs from criminals as if it was some kind of gotcha, and ignored the part of the research that didn't support what you were saying,

How is the Green Party ‘government’ going to acquire the class A’s they have promised to supply to those who want to give them a try? I went to the source (as I like to do) and they have promised to supply party drugs to people. I fail to see how the research you presented changes that.

I’m sorry if I have gravely misunderstood your point but I read your post quite carefully and fail to see where I have mischaracterised. If there is such a big misunderstanding surely you can just explain your point so I understand? Otherwise I don’t feel like this is a ‘me’ problem.

Those numbers are just for the councils that were up for election - only 136 out of 317 councils have elections this year. So no, Reform do not have the highest number of council seats in England.

The new mayor for Lewisham had to mention Gaza and its 'genocide' in his manifesto.

See - for this is creeping in. Birmingham have what 4 MP’s voted in on one issue Gaza.

Can you imagine any other country having MP’s talking about an issue outside of that country. We need to be very careful about what is happening here.

I’ve debated this point on previous threads and the answer from the left is that it’s reasonable to debate foreign policy issues in a general election. You might agree that the same could be argued for a mayoral election.

Oh dear. Instead of improving things here and tackling real local issues, the focus is 'gaza'. 🙄