Politics 2024/25 General Election Voting Intention (2022)

[DaGaffer]

I'd like you to define "fine".

I didn't have a problem with it personally, but a stack of polish and romanians put a load of builders around here under a lot of pressure (and yes, I like builders under pressure) - and now they've gone, because they've been made to feel not welcome, the builders are doing better again.


I'd like you to bring that data. There's plenty of data, official data, that shows that migration boosts labour supply and that the impact on native workers is uneven, and often negative in low-skilled sectors - which I've said above. On wages alone The Bank of England show a 2% drop in the pay of native workers for every 10% rise in the proportion of immigrants in that sector. The Home Office and UCL say similar.

And this is in a country which has long term ideological bent towards open immigration - we generally produce economic papers that support what we want to think.

But the big bit of what you said that says a lot (and is a very commonly held view) is this:

1. Fuck them. Competition did us all good. And to the second point, you're looking at the wrong system, widen out to the EU level and it the wage thing rebalances because of wider opportunity.

Leave home. Move to another country. Leave your family, friends, loved-ones behind. Take advantage of all these "wonderful opportunities" - even if you really don't want to. Because if you don't - we'll call you feckless, lazy, tell you that it's your fault that you're poor because you didn't want to get on your bike.

The working class in my family didn't not move to Europe when they could because they were lazy or feckless. They work fucking hard. They stayed because they love the people they grew up with. They tend to look after their parents and grandparents.

It's the university educated wankers like me who ditch the family and fuck off elsewhere.

They shouldn't have to move away to earn a decent living. They already live in one of the richest countries on the planet. Their wages have been fucked over by legions of cheap labour being brought in that benefitted business.

2. Yeah fuck them too. My Dad (who didn't have degree) went to Germany for work in 1973. And then on the rigs, because it was the right thing to do for his family. And as all those Poles and Romanians and Greeks realised, it's not fucking permanent. No one owes you a job at the location of your choosing, they never have. I have far more time for the people who go half way around the world for a better life than the feckless twats who can't even move within their own country most of the time. Do you really think my family wanted to live in fucking Grimsby? No, that's where the work was at the time.

I don't disagree, but open migration jump-started massively in 1997 under Blair.. Johnson did what you said, and the UK public guzzled it down, because we don't educate people to think critically in in that manner. We educate for a compliant, gullible population that will suck business' dick.
I made the quip about "uneducated" above - and in many ways this is true. But people know when their job goes to someone cheaper who'd just moved here (or if you've been made redundant and your job's been offshored to what is effectively chinese slave labour (which my company is doing en-mass right now - accellerating their decades long mode of operation)).

Yes it jump-started, and yes Labour got their figures wrong, but that was also a massive early warning system that people need to re-calibrate their understanding of the world they live in. We actually got a head start. And once again, yes there may have been downward pressure on some jobs, but that's definitely not true in every sector, and there were whole parts of the economy where Brits were flat out refusing to do jobs (health and social care) or wouldn't get educated in the right ones (STEM) and that was at a time when education opportunities were being expanded not gutted as they were under the Tories.

Nah. Politicians in Britain won't tell the truth because they're hamstrung by a global economic system they have to pander to. Our politicians are just middle managers trying to keep a lid on the population's anger, whilst living under technocratic rule. If people felt what it was really like, they'd riot more.

Labour isn't doing anything economically because they never wanted to do anything economically. In fact, there's very little they can do.

What Labour is doing is this: their legislative programme, as passed up until now, and on the schedule, is likely to entrench a left-leaning beauracracy regardless of whoever gets voted in next.

Labour is rewiring the state, with new agencies, oversight bodies, and civil service mandates. These are structural changes that go further than Blair's "managerialism" - their reforms are more institutionally entrenching. It'll be difficult for any incumbent to reverse what they're doing - institutional inerta will be the order of the day.

Every time Labour get in, the UK becomes less pleasant

The UK is much worse at it than almost everywhere, because there's no room for more than the two identikit voices. You've even said it yourself, Tory or Tory-lite, and now "Tory with extra cunt" but they're all the flavours of the same shit, but no one is standing up and pointing it out. It's not just globalism, its denialism.

 

[Scouse]

1. Fuck them. Competition did us all good. And to the second point, you're looking at the wrong system, widen out to the EU level and it the wage thing rebalances because of wider opportunity.

So, it helps Romanians, Polish, immigrants, but it fucks over local people.

Why was it hard for you to just say that then? "Fuck them" is a valid point of view. I don't agree with it, obviously, but it's valid. But it is an admission that what I've been saying about migration is correct.

2. Yeah fuck them too. My Dad (who didn't have degree) went to Germany for work in 1973. And then on the rigs, because it was the right thing to do for his family. And as all those Poles and Romanians and Greeks realised, it's not fucking permanent. No one owes you a job at the location of your choosing, they never have. I have far more time for the people who go half way around the world for a better life than the feckless twats who can't even move within their own country most of the time. Do you really think my family wanted to live in fucking Grimsby? No, that's where the work was at the time.

So yes, you don't give a fuck about the lots of people who want to stay with their families. Which, btw, is how humans have evolved.

I left. I get it. But it's not right to say that everyone should, and if they don't they're feckless twats who deserve their poverty.

They don't. The system needs to change - not them. Economics should bend for the desires of the people, not the other way around. We create misery otherwise - which we're succesfully doing. Maybe when people were religious they could hang on to hope of happiness in the afterlife, but right now everyone understands this is it - and it's shit.

Yes it jump-started, and yes Labour got their figures wrong, but that was also a massive early warning system that people need to re-calibrate their understanding of the world they live in.

Nah. The leaders and the rich need to recalibrate how they fucking treat people.

The UK is much worse at it than almost everywhere, because there's no room for more than the two identikit voices. You've even said it yourself, Tory or Tory-lite, and now "Tory with extra cunt" but they're all the flavours of the same shit, but no one is standing up and pointing it out. It's not just globalism, its denialism.

Lots of people are pointing it out. But we've all been stuck in a global denialism since the 1970's really. Young adults today are the canaries that have been brought up in captivity - they don't know any different, and they can't see it.

I daresay we were blind to shitloads when we were young too - but what we've definitely lost in our lifetimes is our overt political thinking.

Even our media is stripped of it, deliberately.