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A Political Thread pt. 2

Therefore reducing immigration would underfund services even more.
Broadly, yes I agree, but not when it comes to illegal immigration, as they don't contribute to the economy in the same way. That's the crucial distinction within the debate tbh, and that's where the helpful rhetoric gets lost.
 
Broadly, yes I agree, but not when it comes to illegal immigration, as they don't contribute to the economy in the same way. That's the crucial distinction within the debate tbh, and that's where the helpful rhetoric gets lost.
Aslylum seekers are not illegal immigrants.

Actually this is what gets lost in the stop the boats rhetoric from the tories. If you actually created an asylum system that works and factors that stop people with legitimate reasons to enter the country you'd solve many issues.
 
Aslylum seekers are not illegal immigrants.

Actually this is what gets lost in the stop the boats rhetoric from the tories. If you actually created an asylum system that works and factors that stop people with legitimate reasons to enter the country you'd solve many issues.

Germany has a better asylum system and they are struggling. Even as a more tolerant country. There is talk of issuing pre-paid debit cards to stop benefits being sent out the country. Off shoring asylum applications and forced community service for those awaiting an asylum decision. Also increasing the time before people can claim benefits.

Nobody has a clue what a working asylum system looks like. Labour are leaning into the stop the boats rhetoric and this is likely to increase as the election approaches.
 
Germany has a better asylum system and they are struggling. Even as a more tolerant country. There is talk of issuing pre-paid debit cards to stop benefits being sent out the country. Off shoring asylum applications and forced community service for those awaiting an asylum decision. Also increasing the time before people can claim benefits.
If someone claims aslylum how do you support them without giving them some kind of benefit?

There's already a time limit for normal migration before benefits kick in (even from the EU before Brexit).

How many benefits are actually being sent out of country? It always sounded like an immigration scare story to me.

Labour's policy seams to be like many things "we don't want this argument before the election".
 
As a matter of interest, has any country faced 100,000's of asylum seekers + illegal migration + normal migration and not faced massive destabilisation if gone largely unchecked? There are millions of people who could legitimately claim asylum and there is simply no way we could take them all in. There needs to be a cut off at which legitimate claimants could be turned away but what would that point be?

Services can't cope.
Services don't have enough funding.
Immigration contributes more to funding than it takes away.

Therefore reducing immigration would underfund services even more.

Sorry but it doesn't work that way. Immigrants contribute more to funding than they take away when they are introduced in a controlled manner filling gaps in the economy. Things like the capacity of services cannot be improved overnight, they need years of work. If we have a sudden influx of people, the capacity of the services simply will not raise to match it fast enough, regardless of their economic impact. Hospitals, schools and infrastructure are already over capacity thanks to a decade and a half of Tory cuts, mismanagement and refusal to invest. Housing costs are through the roof as demand has massively outstripped supply. We need to get a grip on all this and cannot do that by further skewing the demand vs supply.
 
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I was reading an article by the Police Federation that just by population increase alone they believe you'd need an extra 100 thousand officers. As it currently stands that's just to service the demand in services. Even if properly invested they would struggle to keep pace.
 
Hospitals, schools and infrastructure are already over capacity thanks to a decade and a half of Tory cuts, mismanagement and refusal to invest.
It is insane when you think about it - my village has had several thousand new houses built over the past decade or so, as has the local city and the surrounding areas. Would be very surprised if it wasn't 5 figures of new builds, which means 2-3x that many new people
Have they built new doctors? No.
Have they built new dentists? No - and two of the existing have stopped seeing NHS patients so there's now one in the whole area
Hospitals? No - and they shut down the A&E
Supermarkets? No - there's a handful of new co-op locals but none big enough for anything more than an essentials/top up shop
Secondary schools? No - meaning the village kids are now having to bus much further afield to go to school
Fair play they've knocked up a couple of new primary schools but where do those kids go when they "graduate"?
Public transport? No. They cut the trains during COVID and have kept them at two an hour since then, buses even more of a joke. From my village they're once an hour between 8am and 7pm, with one bus before that and one after - not synched with the trains at all so I'd need to get the 6am bus if I wanted to get the train to work

Infrastructure in this country is just a sick joke
 
It is insane when you think about it - my village has had several thousand new houses built over the past decade or so, as has the local city and the surrounding areas. Would be very surprised if it wasn't 5 figures of new builds, which means 2-3x that many new people
Have they built new doctors? No.
Have they built new dentists? No - and two of the existing have stopped seeing NHS patients so there's now one in the whole area
Hospitals? No - and they shut down the A&E
Supermarkets? No - there's a handful of co-op locals but none big enough for anything more than an essentials/top up shop
Secondary schools? No - meaning the village kids are now having to bus much further afield to go to school
Fair play they've knocked up a couple of new primary schools but where do those kids go when they "graduate"?
Public transport? No. They cut the trains during COVID and have kept them at two an hour since then, buses even more of a joke. From my village they're once an hour between 8am and 7pm, with one bus before that and one after - not synched with the trains at all so I'd need to get the 6am bus if I wanted to get the train to work

Infrastructure in this country is just a sick joke
As a matter of interest, which is your village? I work in civil engineering and there is a chance I may have worked on something near you... 😂
 
Is this all going to hinder Biden at the ballot box. With a risk Biden looks like he's losing control. Assuming Trump makes it to November.
"And the specter of left-wing extremism is rising as some protests adopt rhetoric that sounds like Hamas or Hezbollah without seeming to acknowledge the Hamas terrorist attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel in October."

I think this is where many on the left get things very very wrong. Israel has done vastly more damage than Hamas or Hezbollah could and essentially is the sole decider of how this will end. Hamas has no power to determine what happens, it's entirely up to Israel. What too many ignore is that the gulf in ability to cause damage between Hamas and Israel is not the same as the willingness to cause damage. If Hamas had Israeli resources, I have no doubt they would be going all out on a campaign to flatten as much of Israel as possible, and I also suspect many of those protesting would be silent.
 
It's such an odd argument for them. "If you tax us, we'll leave"...so, we lose nothing anyway?
It's such a fundamentally unfair rule. I dealt with a lot of non doms and they just leave anyway after 14 years with no intention to pay tax on their offshore income and gains. And the invasion of Ukraine showed a lot of the super wealthy Russians like Abramovich who claimed it were dodgy as F.
 
It's such a fundamentally unfair rule. I dealt with a lot of non doms and they just leave anyway after 14 years with no intention to pay tax on their offshore income and gains. And the invasion of Ukraine showed a lot of the super wealthy Russians like Abramovich who claimed it were dodgy as F.
My knowledge of taxes is pretty slim so i might be way out on this. Non-doms generate roughly 8 billion to the UK economy. Removing the status could generate 10 billion but that's based on them staying. If they leave the UK economy could be worse off from the 8 billion that it is currently getting. With other more favorable EU countries reaping the benefit as they offer better terms. So will the new system generate more money or ultimately will it lose more idk.

Happy to be wrong as definitely it's not my subject of choice. It is unfair but is seems they will simply take the ball home and go play some where else. Because the super rich can
 
My knowledge of taxes is pretty slim so i might be way out on this. Non-doms generate roughly 8 billion to the UK economy. Removing the status could generate 10 billion but that's based on them staying. If they leave the UK economy could be worse off from the 8 billion that it is currently getting. With other more favorable EU countries reaping the benefit as they offer better terms. So will the new system generate more money or ultimately will it lose more idk.

Happy to be wrong as definitely it's not my subject of choice. It is unfair but is seems they will simply take the ball home and go play some where else. Because the super rich can
This is the unknown. The treasury would have provided stats to show the impact of overall of the change in the rules. But they are just forecasts. The reality is a lot of them will leave. Basically what these rules mean are that if you are rich enough you can pay an annual tax charge to not pay UK tax on your offshore income and gains (£30k if resident for 7/9 tax years; £60k if resident for 12/14 tax years). This doesn't include IHT which is the biggie for most non Dom ultra wealthy ie Rishi's wife, who conveniently came out to say she would pay income tax on dividends (39.35%) from those Infosys shares she owns (reportedly worth £700m) but stayed v. quiet on her domicile status for IHT should she die in this country within 14 years. And HMRC are currently consulting on the exact rules. As it stands the likes of Rishi's wife will just put those shares in an excluded offshore property trust before 5/4/25 (if not done so already) so it is excluded from her estate when she dies and not subject to UK IHT rate of 40%. Labour could change this if they were to get in.

Basically it was a political move by Hunt and Rishi to steal Labour's thunder on their proposal.
 

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