At last, someone stating the blatantly obvious. I’ve been calling it a Ponzi scheme for years and getting a ton of abuse when I used to comment on Guardian articles during the Brexit debate (I know! Don’t laugh). What on earth do they expect immigrants to do…..stay healthy, fit, constantly paying in huge amounts of tax, never consuming services or taking up housing? Do they imagine them as magical Peter Pan figures, forever young, never committing crime, never creating pollution due to building density, road congestion, never creating food and water shortages and never helping to destroy this green and pleasant land with endless concrete? Ffs where have all the thinkers gone while the virtue signallers have been attempting to turn the country into a third world shithole? I despair.
Exactly. There are so many points which can be pulled apart by the most cursory look at the glaringly obvious facts regarding mass immigration. But then we’re talking about adults who believe than men can become women by putting on a dress and uttering some magic words so I don’t know why I’m so shocked at the mass stupidity of our age.
So true. At least there are cracks in the facade now with reason breaking through from the expert class. And vast swathes of the public now see the mismanagement for what it is and have clearly lost patience.
While I'm unsurprised that the Guardianista are unable to grasp the simple truth, you would have thought that the environmental movement - those members of the Green Party who haven't switched their attention completely to trans rights and jihadism, for example - would be concerned at the implications of further decades of mass immigration for the environment, but apparently not. As you say, transport infrastructure, housing, water supply, sewerage, pollution are all inevitable impacts when you consider that the UK would need appx 18 new cities the size of Birmingham to accommodate all these new migrants.
Exactly, I made that point often but it was like talking to a brick wall. This era has opened my eyes to the way that ideology can addle the brain and how easy it is for so many to fall into ideological indoctrination. Communist revolutions now no longer feel like ancient history except now it’s being done by stealth, a cut at a time.
We can see many ghettos springing up populated by people who have no intention of integrating - or - many of them working. This has been a stupid failure of successive governments. We really do need to say integrate or leave.
As for the population problem: I'm unpopular because in my view a situation where a modest rent or mortgage needs two wages is obviously insupportable. The cost of housing is at a ridiculous multiple and needs to fall dramatically. Secondly, just as it did after the war. we have to pay people to have babies. Our reproduction rate is below replacement so the country will be taken over by immigrants unless we act.
We need to re institute an environment where creating a family is seen as a benefit to society and not a hostile act and an inconvenient interruption to the wage stream. It has been made practically impossible for young people to settle down, make a home and raise their children without a huge struggle.
I'm concerned about any attempt to compete with the birthrate of incomers without having first permanently ended anything like their current rate of arrival and persuaded those already here to better integrate into our culture. Increasing our birthrate should be very much a second priority aimed to maintain an equilibrium. Otherwise we might briefly stave off being out-numbered, but through even worse environmental over-crowding and breakdown in infrastructure and social cohesion, have lost much of what we wanted to preserve anyway. What effect, for example, would calling for a higher population have upon the housing problem you mention? There is very little chance of getting many already here to leave.
Thanks TT, I was going to write pretty much the same. It is so irking seeing something and saying it for years to the deaf but thank goodness (maybe as illegal residences spread to more affluent areas) it seems the ship is shifting. I have never minded anything so much in my life (bar the children), how we took it all for granted!
Same. It’s heartbreaking to see this wonderful country, its environment and culture destroyed and its gentle, tolerant people replaced with so many violent and intolerant people. And I’m not against immigration. Just the numbers and the quality of some of those we’ve had foisted on us since Blair opened the floodgates……or maybe before that when you think about the grooming gangs.
Only an idiot would have thought handing our country over to the third world would bring any real benefits whatsoever . Our politicians are always looking for a quick short term fix because they are not focussed on our country’s and our people’s future, they are focussed on winning the next election only . What this Labour government has done is shine a light on the woefully poor calibre of most of our politicians . Intellectually challenged, short sighted, self serving dross .
This latest one in one out farce of Starmers , he is looking for the soundbite , the country is looking for real long term solutions . Patience has run out .
Horrifying that the GBN reports that over a thousand, majority of which are young men, I expect, have pitched up at Dover since the start of the 1 in 1 out scheme. Having read on the GBN reports the details of the scheme I’m astounded at the naivety of those who brokered this deal. If they were business people their business would be bankrupt in two shakes of a lambs tail. Should we expect any better from a cabinet of career politicians and lawyers, and a civil service which have for decades ruled the roost in Whitehall, those same ‘mandarins’ of all grades, are probably more interested in scrutinising their gold plated pension details. BBCs ‘Yes Minister’, the favourite 1970s comedy, is so near the truth it is prophetic. I was serving in the army and out of the country when ‘Yes Prime Minister’ was running so missed that series, but I expect it was more of the same.
The people smugglers were advertising a free return to Britain for anybody sent back to France under the one in one policy before the ink was dry on the agreement . Another £100 million down the drain this country cannot afford. I saw a translation of what these incoming dinghy men were chanting posted by Farage on FB and I can tell you one of the words was invasion . The politicians and civil servants allowing this to continue and congratulating each other on being world leading in adhering to international law , are actually being world leading in facilitating an invasion and are too blinkered to get their heads around that reality
We must stop calling it ‘1 in 1 out’ since the ‘1 out’ is replaced with another 1 so it’s 2 in, none out.
Add to this the fact that the UK government has no say over the immigrant we then receive and pays the costs of both the returner and the new arrival, then our incompetent government has now managed to increase the already burgeoning costs of illegal migrants.
Well done Kier - another one to add to the list of shockingly negotiated deals.
Having served in the Army during the cold war era I had quite a lot of experience of seeing just how poor the third world was. The army medical services did a lot of hearts and minds work in sorting out some basic health care for the local population wherever we were posted, and I have no doubt the Royal Engineers and others built bridges and did other infrastructure work just to provide an easier life for the villagers of those nations which were blatantly ignored by their governments, who’s political classes rarely stepped out of the comfort of their capital cities. I doubt if much has changed, so is it any wonder that poorer people fall for the lie that Britain’s streets are paved with gold and they sell themselves to the people traffickers and then on arrival here they disappear into the black economy. This is the 21c equivalent of slavery which Wilberforce and others fought for years to abolish. It will take a government with grit and steel in its bones to fight this evil, and I would say this to our feckless PM and his cabinet that a strap line ‘we will smash the gangs’ is as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
I doubt whether importing the third world was even seen as a short term fix. I suspect it was a continuation of the policy of forcing "diversity" upon us.
Day 1: The Great Repeal Act dumping 25 years of malign Labour & Tory/Lib Dem policy. Set up a new HM Homeland Security Service whose No1 priority is protecting the British people and its borders.
Their job is made easier as the new government announces the end of the asylum system. All immigration is halted until a DOGE unit has gone through the books.
Severely tighten up requirements of visa & British passport issuing.
Introduce US style finger printing at the Borders. Any person entering the UK from an overseas country should be obliged to have health insurance so putting a stop to freeloading on the NHS.
Sack Civil Servants who obstruct these policies as it will be the mandated by the electorate. As will be deploying our Armed Forces to our Borders to end illegal immigration. All in manifesto so the Lords can’t obstruct.
Well David, I agree. We would only end up with the situation we have at the present time where ‘veteran soldiers’ now in their 70s and 80s are facing prosecutions for ‘crimes’ committed during the height of the troubles (NI), while the ‘opposition’ (to put it politely) were given letters of ‘comfort’ from the Tony Blair government to prevent them being prosecuted for some of the worst atrocities meted out to Police and civilians living in NI at the time. Mr Johnny Mercer, who for a long time was one of the MPs in Plymouth, has long been fighting for justice for those veterans. It would be the job of Border Force to ensure our borders were properly secured.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Our Armed Forces did sterling service during Covid. Helping the Civil authorities during a National Emergency can be done. I would say a majority of British people view the channel crossings as a National Emergency. Turning the boats back will require coordination and skills that certain elements of the Military have.
In addition, do not renew work visas of foreign low earners and scrap indefinite leave to remain. Our own people should be filling the jobs the foreign low earners are in. Since such people are a net drain on the economy, perhaps some of that money could be used to train our own, improve working conditions and subsidise the transition from worklessness to work. State-funded worklessness should not be an option for British able bodied where jobs are available. I think we need a change in culture among many British citizens before we start encouraging them to have more children.
This commentary by Mr Miles, certainly an expert in his field, is most welcome and a step in the right direction so far as waking the governing powers up to reality. It’s a long road back to sanity but it has to start somewhere. Thank you to Matt and his fellow travellers for pushing this issue. Hopefully, more elites will slowly wake up and we can see a return to ‘Great’ Britain. The next question is “What happens to the many thousands of illegal immigrants already in the country?”
Any political party brave enough to tackle the whole question of immigration per se is odds on to win Government.
At last. A member of the metropolitan elite who is prepared to break ranks with the consensus “diversity is our strength” and instead look at the facts and speak the truth. The dam is breaking.
You and notable others have thrown wider the Overton Window by a large measure, but there are many others, politicians and media who wish to draw a curtain over the window by obfuscation, delaying and denial tactics to 'separate' their 'elite' cohort 'fine thinking' from the hoi-polloi's good sense and plain speaking about a problem of much more immediacy than is commonly and reluctantly recognised by the msm.
Oh for some politicians with foresight who are not blinded by ideology and short termism. This country needs common sense solutions, not to import more problems.
Personally rather than childcare I’d very strongly support marriage with major tax breaks for married couples with children.
The problem with supporting childcare directly are threefold.
1. It tends to nationalise the masculine role - effectively women can marry the government, which creates a moral hazard for both sexes.
2. It’s no use us having more children if so many of them are damaged by dysfunctional family backgrounds. Huge evidence that under-achievement in young men is strongly linked to growing up without father. There is also evidence that farming children out to day care under the age of three is damaging for the child.
3. It doesn’t give women a choice whether to look after their own children - as a great many want to - or go back to work and use day care. Both are legitimate choices.
I agree with your point 2. Back in the day, girls at comprehensives who were unlikely to get any 'O' levels were encouraged to study childcare at CSE level. At least then they might gain some knowledge of child development and basic childcare to take into their roles as parents. And when I see some of the characters rocking up to work at the nurseries I pass in the morning, I shudder. They may like children, but with a can of Red Bull in one hand and their phone glued to their ear with the other, what do they really have to offer their charges? Good childcare is so important but it appears to be valued at minimum wage.
I agree - a woman called Erica Komisar did an interview on Triggernometry in which she discussed the realities of the nursery culture than has emerged since women have entered the world of work and how much damage this is doing to mothers and babies. Recommend a listen.
The SDP policy is frontloading child-benefit in the first two years so women don't need to work at the most vulnerable stages of a child's life. Most women want to be at home when their children are very young, it is best for them and best for their babies. 30 free childcare hours is missing the point entirely, and just giving an opportunity for the state to groom kids (see the Telegraph report on nurseries encouraging children to write valentine's cards for refugees!!)
I support a pro family policy but an aging population can support itself if:
1 there are plenty of healthy older people
2 they are allowed to work without discrimination by employers, banks etc
3 work is structured for them as it should also be to get non-workers to work
Look around. Older and less fit or less capable people would easily be able to replace most of the road repair teams one sees. How hard can it be to watch the digger driver. I am sure I could do his job - my father drove a combine harvester aged 80 )him, not the machine!).
It’s as if someone has been down to London and slapped them across the face with a wet fish 🐠 to demonstrate what is so glaringly obvious! My head wobbles as I see khan and Starmer working out how they will dig themselves out of this !!
As a reader and contributor to your Substack, Matt, this is the first morning in a long, long time when my husband and I have had reason to believe that the insanity of the last 2 decades may be just about to turn the corner back to sanity. The road ahead is going to be hard for Reform, but we have faith that at least it will be a road to a better country for our children and grandchildren. We need to be rid of this destructive and traitorous government, with its appalling, wannabe dictator leader asap so that Great Britain can rise again from these ashes. I raise my coffee to you for all of your hard work for our country.
At last! Common sense can now prevail with a coherent plan! For instance, I have always been sad when migrant workers have needed to be employed to pick our fruit and veg because our own people just don’t want to do it or worse still have not got the skill. It has got so much worse since Blair insisted that 50% of our young population should have a degree raising their expectations to unrealistic levels of achievement, looking down on any form of manual labour, not realising that manual labour is a great skill and well done is the bedrock of all our lives and brings huge personal satisfaction even when repetitive in fact for some that can be the heart of the satisfaction as it is for me!
as an aside and off topic be sure to check out and read carefully a petition on the uk government and parliament petition page...repeal the online safety act..it currently has514,078, signatures it urgently needs many more and you can help in getting them first be sure to sign it and then and most importantly be sure to reshare it widely all over the uk..northern ireland/wales/scotland/england/....with as many like minded people as you possibly can and be sure to ask each one of them to do exactly the same as im asking you to do in this message
This economics professor, David Miles, is either staggeringly incompetent to have only just realised the huge lifetime costs to the country of poorly educated low skilled mass migration. Or he is a coward who was too afraid to speak out when he could have done so twenty years ago. I also suspect the OBR like the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Monetary Policy Committee is completely captured by an economic monoculture and group think, and has zero diversity of economic perspective. Another example of broken Britain.
Or 22,000 houses planned to cover swathes of land, productive farm land and green belt, which will destroy miles of lovely Warwickshire. I assume that to perform this act of vandalism, as planned in many other parts of our rapidly disappearing green and pleasant land, will require importing masses of immigrant labour to build these houses, who will then require housing, health care, education etc. etc. etc. And so it goes on.
Why are our governments and our leaders behind the curve when they should be ahead of the curve like you and economist Liam Halligan? So good to see your social, cultural, political and economic arguments winning. Whether it’s on these substacks or the streets of Epping (and elsewhere) we see ‘lions led by donkeys’. Keep going!
Whilst I am heartened by the apparent scale of anti-immigration sentiment spreading around Britain I do feel a need for a broad overview of our economic position. We’re all fond of the slogan ‘broken Britain’ but there seems to be an awful lot of people doing very well thank you. Do the comfortable classes think Britain is broken? Exactly what is broken? Are we taking too much notice of hysterical click-bait headlines? My personal view is that we are suffering from excessive legislative interference in too many aspects of life; our education system isn’t performing well enough by international standards or in terms of its effect on civil life, and that we are dangerously over-borrowed. That will do for now - there’s plenty more to discuss.
At last, someone stating the blatantly obvious. I’ve been calling it a Ponzi scheme for years and getting a ton of abuse when I used to comment on Guardian articles during the Brexit debate (I know! Don’t laugh). What on earth do they expect immigrants to do…..stay healthy, fit, constantly paying in huge amounts of tax, never consuming services or taking up housing? Do they imagine them as magical Peter Pan figures, forever young, never committing crime, never creating pollution due to building density, road congestion, never creating food and water shortages and never helping to destroy this green and pleasant land with endless concrete? Ffs where have all the thinkers gone while the virtue signallers have been attempting to turn the country into a third world shithole? I despair.
Also note even Miles models migrants at age 20-60 so it’s not even the full picture of costs
Exactly. There are so many points which can be pulled apart by the most cursory look at the glaringly obvious facts regarding mass immigration. But then we’re talking about adults who believe than men can become women by putting on a dress and uttering some magic words so I don’t know why I’m so shocked at the mass stupidity of our age.
Thanks Matt, you help to keep me sane.
He keeps us all sane. This community is a lifeline!
Hear hear
Seconded !
Presumably he has never walked past a hospital waiting room in London and seen the see of elderly faces from around the world sitting there.
So true. At least there are cracks in the facade now with reason breaking through from the expert class. And vast swathes of the public now see the mismanagement for what it is and have clearly lost patience.
While I'm unsurprised that the Guardianista are unable to grasp the simple truth, you would have thought that the environmental movement - those members of the Green Party who haven't switched their attention completely to trans rights and jihadism, for example - would be concerned at the implications of further decades of mass immigration for the environment, but apparently not. As you say, transport infrastructure, housing, water supply, sewerage, pollution are all inevitable impacts when you consider that the UK would need appx 18 new cities the size of Birmingham to accommodate all these new migrants.
Exactly, I made that point often but it was like talking to a brick wall. This era has opened my eyes to the way that ideology can addle the brain and how easy it is for so many to fall into ideological indoctrination. Communist revolutions now no longer feel like ancient history except now it’s being done by stealth, a cut at a time.
We can see many ghettos springing up populated by people who have no intention of integrating - or - many of them working. This has been a stupid failure of successive governments. We really do need to say integrate or leave.
As for the population problem: I'm unpopular because in my view a situation where a modest rent or mortgage needs two wages is obviously insupportable. The cost of housing is at a ridiculous multiple and needs to fall dramatically. Secondly, just as it did after the war. we have to pay people to have babies. Our reproduction rate is below replacement so the country will be taken over by immigrants unless we act.
We need to re institute an environment where creating a family is seen as a benefit to society and not a hostile act and an inconvenient interruption to the wage stream. It has been made practically impossible for young people to settle down, make a home and raise their children without a huge struggle.
I agree.
Thank you.
I'm concerned about any attempt to compete with the birthrate of incomers without having first permanently ended anything like their current rate of arrival and persuaded those already here to better integrate into our culture. Increasing our birthrate should be very much a second priority aimed to maintain an equilibrium. Otherwise we might briefly stave off being out-numbered, but through even worse environmental over-crowding and breakdown in infrastructure and social cohesion, have lost much of what we wanted to preserve anyway. What effect, for example, would calling for a higher population have upon the housing problem you mention? There is very little chance of getting many already here to leave.
Chicken and eggs? We need a higher birth-rate to survive as a nation. In my view if we wait for things to be perfect they never will be.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Thanks TT, I was going to write pretty much the same. It is so irking seeing something and saying it for years to the deaf but thank goodness (maybe as illegal residences spread to more affluent areas) it seems the ship is shifting. I have never minded anything so much in my life (bar the children), how we took it all for granted!
Same. It’s heartbreaking to see this wonderful country, its environment and culture destroyed and its gentle, tolerant people replaced with so many violent and intolerant people. And I’m not against immigration. Just the numbers and the quality of some of those we’ve had foisted on us since Blair opened the floodgates……or maybe before that when you think about the grooming gangs.
Only an idiot would have thought handing our country over to the third world would bring any real benefits whatsoever . Our politicians are always looking for a quick short term fix because they are not focussed on our country’s and our people’s future, they are focussed on winning the next election only . What this Labour government has done is shine a light on the woefully poor calibre of most of our politicians . Intellectually challenged, short sighted, self serving dross .
This latest one in one out farce of Starmers , he is looking for the soundbite , the country is looking for real long term solutions . Patience has run out .
Horrifying that the GBN reports that over a thousand, majority of which are young men, I expect, have pitched up at Dover since the start of the 1 in 1 out scheme. Having read on the GBN reports the details of the scheme I’m astounded at the naivety of those who brokered this deal. If they were business people their business would be bankrupt in two shakes of a lambs tail. Should we expect any better from a cabinet of career politicians and lawyers, and a civil service which have for decades ruled the roost in Whitehall, those same ‘mandarins’ of all grades, are probably more interested in scrutinising their gold plated pension details. BBCs ‘Yes Minister’, the favourite 1970s comedy, is so near the truth it is prophetic. I was serving in the army and out of the country when ‘Yes Prime Minister’ was running so missed that series, but I expect it was more of the same.
The people smugglers were advertising a free return to Britain for anybody sent back to France under the one in one policy before the ink was dry on the agreement . Another £100 million down the drain this country cannot afford. I saw a translation of what these incoming dinghy men were chanting posted by Farage on FB and I can tell you one of the words was invasion . The politicians and civil servants allowing this to continue and congratulating each other on being world leading in adhering to international law , are actually being world leading in facilitating an invasion and are too blinkered to get their heads around that reality
We must stop calling it ‘1 in 1 out’ since the ‘1 out’ is replaced with another 1 so it’s 2 in, none out.
Add to this the fact that the UK government has no say over the immigrant we then receive and pays the costs of both the returner and the new arrival, then our incompetent government has now managed to increase the already burgeoning costs of illegal migrants.
Well done Kier - another one to add to the list of shockingly negotiated deals.
The government couldn’t run a welk stall.
It makes you wonder whether it was a deliberately bad deal.
Having served in the Army during the cold war era I had quite a lot of experience of seeing just how poor the third world was. The army medical services did a lot of hearts and minds work in sorting out some basic health care for the local population wherever we were posted, and I have no doubt the Royal Engineers and others built bridges and did other infrastructure work just to provide an easier life for the villagers of those nations which were blatantly ignored by their governments, who’s political classes rarely stepped out of the comfort of their capital cities. I doubt if much has changed, so is it any wonder that poorer people fall for the lie that Britain’s streets are paved with gold and they sell themselves to the people traffickers and then on arrival here they disappear into the black economy. This is the 21c equivalent of slavery which Wilberforce and others fought for years to abolish. It will take a government with grit and steel in its bones to fight this evil, and I would say this to our feckless PM and his cabinet that a strap line ‘we will smash the gangs’ is as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
Brilliant comment Lesley!
I doubt whether importing the third world was even seen as a short term fix. I suspect it was a continuation of the policy of forcing "diversity" upon us.
Day 1: The Great Repeal Act dumping 25 years of malign Labour & Tory/Lib Dem policy. Set up a new HM Homeland Security Service whose No1 priority is protecting the British people and its borders.
Their job is made easier as the new government announces the end of the asylum system. All immigration is halted until a DOGE unit has gone through the books.
Severely tighten up requirements of visa & British passport issuing.
Introduce US style finger printing at the Borders. Any person entering the UK from an overseas country should be obliged to have health insurance so putting a stop to freeloading on the NHS.
Sack Civil Servants who obstruct these policies as it will be the mandated by the electorate. As will be deploying our Armed Forces to our Borders to end illegal immigration. All in manifesto so the Lords can’t obstruct.
I am going to write on this soon
Not sure about sending in the army. A) do we have enough of them. And B) what happens when they do what soldiers do - start shooting?
Well David, I agree. We would only end up with the situation we have at the present time where ‘veteran soldiers’ now in their 70s and 80s are facing prosecutions for ‘crimes’ committed during the height of the troubles (NI), while the ‘opposition’ (to put it politely) were given letters of ‘comfort’ from the Tony Blair government to prevent them being prosecuted for some of the worst atrocities meted out to Police and civilians living in NI at the time. Mr Johnny Mercer, who for a long time was one of the MPs in Plymouth, has long been fighting for justice for those veterans. It would be the job of Border Force to ensure our borders were properly secured.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Our Armed Forces did sterling service during Covid. Helping the Civil authorities during a National Emergency can be done. I would say a majority of British people view the channel crossings as a National Emergency. Turning the boats back will require coordination and skills that certain elements of the Military have.
In addition, do not renew work visas of foreign low earners and scrap indefinite leave to remain. Our own people should be filling the jobs the foreign low earners are in. Since such people are a net drain on the economy, perhaps some of that money could be used to train our own, improve working conditions and subsidise the transition from worklessness to work. State-funded worklessness should not be an option for British able bodied where jobs are available. I think we need a change in culture among many British citizens before we start encouraging them to have more children.
This commentary by Mr Miles, certainly an expert in his field, is most welcome and a step in the right direction so far as waking the governing powers up to reality. It’s a long road back to sanity but it has to start somewhere. Thank you to Matt and his fellow travellers for pushing this issue. Hopefully, more elites will slowly wake up and we can see a return to ‘Great’ Britain. The next question is “What happens to the many thousands of illegal immigrants already in the country?”
Any political party brave enough to tackle the whole question of immigration per se is odds on to win Government.
At last. A member of the metropolitan elite who is prepared to break ranks with the consensus “diversity is our strength” and instead look at the facts and speak the truth. The dam is breaking.
Agree —the intellectual argument for mass migration is falling apart, we just have to keep highlighting it and communicating to voters
You and notable others have thrown wider the Overton Window by a large measure, but there are many others, politicians and media who wish to draw a curtain over the window by obfuscation, delaying and denial tactics to 'separate' their 'elite' cohort 'fine thinking' from the hoi-polloi's good sense and plain speaking about a problem of much more immediacy than is commonly and reluctantly recognised by the msm.
Oh for some politicians with foresight who are not blinded by ideology and short termism. This country needs common sense solutions, not to import more problems.
The only way an aggressive pro family policy works is affordable housing and subsidised childcare. This country doesnt have either.
You can have affordable and available housing or mass immigration. You cannot have both.
Personally rather than childcare I’d very strongly support marriage with major tax breaks for married couples with children.
The problem with supporting childcare directly are threefold.
1. It tends to nationalise the masculine role - effectively women can marry the government, which creates a moral hazard for both sexes.
2. It’s no use us having more children if so many of them are damaged by dysfunctional family backgrounds. Huge evidence that under-achievement in young men is strongly linked to growing up without father. There is also evidence that farming children out to day care under the age of three is damaging for the child.
3. It doesn’t give women a choice whether to look after their own children - as a great many want to - or go back to work and use day care. Both are legitimate choices.
I agree with your point 2. Back in the day, girls at comprehensives who were unlikely to get any 'O' levels were encouraged to study childcare at CSE level. At least then they might gain some knowledge of child development and basic childcare to take into their roles as parents. And when I see some of the characters rocking up to work at the nurseries I pass in the morning, I shudder. They may like children, but with a can of Red Bull in one hand and their phone glued to their ear with the other, what do they really have to offer their charges? Good childcare is so important but it appears to be valued at minimum wage.
I agree - a woman called Erica Komisar did an interview on Triggernometry in which she discussed the realities of the nursery culture than has emerged since women have entered the world of work and how much damage this is doing to mothers and babies. Recommend a listen.
The SDP policy is frontloading child-benefit in the first two years so women don't need to work at the most vulnerable stages of a child's life. Most women want to be at home when their children are very young, it is best for them and best for their babies. 30 free childcare hours is missing the point entirely, and just giving an opportunity for the state to groom kids (see the Telegraph report on nurseries encouraging children to write valentine's cards for refugees!!)
I support a pro family policy but an aging population can support itself if:
1 there are plenty of healthy older people
2 they are allowed to work without discrimination by employers, banks etc
3 work is structured for them as it should also be to get non-workers to work
Look around. Older and less fit or less capable people would easily be able to replace most of the road repair teams one sees. How hard can it be to watch the digger driver. I am sure I could do his job - my father drove a combine harvester aged 80 )him, not the machine!).
Etc.
We also need investment in automation so that jobs are physically easier for older workers.
It’s as if someone has been down to London and slapped them across the face with a wet fish 🐠 to demonstrate what is so glaringly obvious! My head wobbles as I see khan and Starmer working out how they will dig themselves out of this !!
John Cleese?
As a reader and contributor to your Substack, Matt, this is the first morning in a long, long time when my husband and I have had reason to believe that the insanity of the last 2 decades may be just about to turn the corner back to sanity. The road ahead is going to be hard for Reform, but we have faith that at least it will be a road to a better country for our children and grandchildren. We need to be rid of this destructive and traitorous government, with its appalling, wannabe dictator leader asap so that Great Britain can rise again from these ashes. I raise my coffee to you for all of your hard work for our country.
We need to dismantle the substructure peddling this Ponzi scheme.
Starmer and the rest of the Fabianists Reeves Phillips Cooper Milliband and arch agitator Khan are in plain sight
How did we end up with 700 islamists embedded in the Home office?
How does the Border Force boss get a bonus?
How are the dinghy’s allowed to be recycled back to France and the French Navy’s life jackets?
Why are we paying benefits to illegals?
Reform desperately required
At last! Common sense can now prevail with a coherent plan! For instance, I have always been sad when migrant workers have needed to be employed to pick our fruit and veg because our own people just don’t want to do it or worse still have not got the skill. It has got so much worse since Blair insisted that 50% of our young population should have a degree raising their expectations to unrealistic levels of achievement, looking down on any form of manual labour, not realising that manual labour is a great skill and well done is the bedrock of all our lives and brings huge personal satisfaction even when repetitive in fact for some that can be the heart of the satisfaction as it is for me!
Mina Bowater
as an aside and off topic be sure to check out and read carefully a petition on the uk government and parliament petition page...repeal the online safety act..it currently has514,078, signatures it urgently needs many more and you can help in getting them first be sure to sign it and then and most importantly be sure to reshare it widely all over the uk..northern ireland/wales/scotland/england/....with as many like minded people as you possibly can and be sure to ask each one of them to do exactly the same as im asking you to do in this message
Have already signed and shared widely.
many thanks
This economics professor, David Miles, is either staggeringly incompetent to have only just realised the huge lifetime costs to the country of poorly educated low skilled mass migration. Or he is a coward who was too afraid to speak out when he could have done so twenty years ago. I also suspect the OBR like the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Monetary Policy Committee is completely captured by an economic monoculture and group think, and has zero diversity of economic perspective. Another example of broken Britain.
He’s speaking out now, which is more than can be said for his elite colleagues. Everyone has to wake up at some time in their life. Give him a break.
You are correct. Better late than never!
Will there be enough farms left to feed 100 million people?
No, because they will all be covered with solar panels.
Or 22,000 houses planned to cover swathes of land, productive farm land and green belt, which will destroy miles of lovely Warwickshire. I assume that to perform this act of vandalism, as planned in many other parts of our rapidly disappearing green and pleasant land, will require importing masses of immigrant labour to build these houses, who will then require housing, health care, education etc. etc. etc. And so it goes on.
Ah, but Millipede has blocked out the sun.
Don't you just love Millipede? Personally I admire him for taking time off from playing Wallace to push forward his misguided drive for net zero!
Why are our governments and our leaders behind the curve when they should be ahead of the curve like you and economist Liam Halligan? So good to see your social, cultural, political and economic arguments winning. Whether it’s on these substacks or the streets of Epping (and elsewhere) we see ‘lions led by donkeys’. Keep going!
Whilst I am heartened by the apparent scale of anti-immigration sentiment spreading around Britain I do feel a need for a broad overview of our economic position. We’re all fond of the slogan ‘broken Britain’ but there seems to be an awful lot of people doing very well thank you. Do the comfortable classes think Britain is broken? Exactly what is broken? Are we taking too much notice of hysterical click-bait headlines? My personal view is that we are suffering from excessive legislative interference in too many aspects of life; our education system isn’t performing well enough by international standards or in terms of its effect on civil life, and that we are dangerously over-borrowed. That will do for now - there’s plenty more to discuss.