As the BBC has reported:
Care workers will no longer be recruited from overseas as part of a crackdown on visas for lower-skilled workers, the home secretary has told the BBC.
Yvette Cooper said it is "time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad" and rules will change this year - instead requiring firms to hire British nationals or extend visas of overseas workers already in the country.
The government plans to unveil changes to visa and recruitment laws on Monday in a bid to cut net migration, and says measures will cut up to 50,000 lower-skilled and care workers coming to the UK over the next year.
I am left almost speechless by this.
People will not get the care they need.
The cost of frontline council services will be increased.
Care homes will go out of business in ever-increasing numbers.
Communities in other countries, supported by remittances from the UK, will lose out.
And all because Labour is pandering to a bunch of far-right racists.
Demonising migrants will never work for Labour. Farage will always do that better than Starmer. No one will be taken in, let alone fooled by this.
And in the meantime, what Labour should be doing is not being done. What is that thing Labour should be doing? It's simple. They should be implementing the Taxing Wealth Report 2024.
We need to redistribute wealth in this country.
Then Labour could deliver the public services we need.
Then they could provide the employment we need.
And they would reduce inequality in this country.
Labour could even help people in need.
Instead, the callous individuals who head the government and who pretend to be Labour politicians are playing to the fascists whilst choosing to hurt hundreds of thousands of people.
I never want to hate anyone. It's becoming ever harder not to in the case of this government.
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This shifts the Overton window to the right, making Reform seems less objectionable.
Cutting foreign carers only makes sense if we’re training enough of our own and paying enough to attract people into the career. In the sector contracts may be lost over a matter of a few pounds because some tendering processes are just about cost and not really about quality of care.
The lack of training, finding, and now migrant backup, means more of a gap between staying that’s needed and what’s available. Insanity
The move to the right in the so-called ‘Overton window’ is not natural.
It is manufactured consent from the harshness of the 2010 Tory party policies that the Labour party does not want to put right, retaining Tory polices like austerity. Labour is accepting the world as they find it.
We are being socially re-engineered back to the swamp we crawled out of.
What Starmer does not get, is that it is his party that will be blamed for the the shortages in certain sensitive sectors whilst he panders to Farage which will only help Farage win more seats!! Surely he should consider that?
But only a REAL politician would consider that, not a political avatar like Starmer who like the grocery clerk he really is, will present the bill to his handlers/funders/clothes/glasses/concert providers when he is deposed and collect his pay off. He will be rewarded handsomely for this, I assure you.
Absolutely pathetic from Starmer and co. You’ve already commented on the effect that restrictions on numbers of overseas students will have a very damaging effect on the universe sector, now the spineless labour clowns will wreck social care
Literally just heard on Today from a care home manager in Cornwall. It doesn’t matter how hard they try, they cannot recruit UK workers, so they have to recruit from overseas.
No the lady said, they are not cheap labour, they get proper training etc etc. The cowardice, stupidly and incompetence of this government is awful.
People from this country do not want to wipe people’s bums – and that is what care workers need to be willing to do.
This may seem off-topic, maybe a bit off-the-wall, but as an Englishman that worked internationally for 3 decades, and has lived abroad for many years, I do think the anglosphere tends to have a generally unhealthy attitude to normal bodily functions. Maybe it’s related to protestantism. I suspect this also plays a part in the rabid anglophone discussions of trans people using public toilets. Even in the UK’s closest neighbour, France, unisex toilets are the norm. It’s not a problem. Maybe the UK, US, etc, need to ask some more fundamental questions about their own cultures ?
Agreed
Possibly people from this country would be more willing to wipe people’s bums, etc, if they were paid properly and felt they had some status in the public eye, instead of being paid as little as the employers can get away, having heavy time pressure as they go from job to job, and being socially despised.
Nail on head. There’s no other way of glossing over it. Most people probably aren’t that keen on wiping their own @rse let alone someone else’s, especially for the minimum wage. If you can only find low paid work i. e. minimum wage, you’re most likely going to choose bar/restaurant work etc over working in a care home, hence the need for overseas workers.
“Wiping bums” and assisting with other bodily functions is a service that can be delivered with dignity for all concerned if done properly. Elevate those roles to a profession and we’ll all be better off.
“We need to redistribute wealth in this country.” But that would hurt LINO politicos – who have money & want more (hiya Rachel!).
LINO are hoping to out-right-whinge Deform coupled to – where else will voters go?
Nesrine Malik as usual has her finger on the pulse:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/12/labour-reform-keir-starmer-hostage-politics
My guess is that the clique running LINO really believe that they are doing the right things (immigration, money, public services (eh?) . Which makes them both out-of-touch and out-of-their-tiny-minds. How to get rid?
Reporting states that Morgan McSweeney is convinced that things like cutting welfare are popular with the broader public, which is why there is now talk of further cuts to try to make things ‘sustainable’ (aka in the name of obvious penny pinching). The Starmer/LINO Politburo is immensely out of touch (I’m almost reminded of Trump recently saying that a wealth tax would be unpopular) – their response to the Locals is doubling down.
And because Labour are seen as ‘the Left’, they are going to drive people to the right- and in fact to the far right, because the right (Tories) have disgraced themselves and are dead as a political force.
“Reporting states that Morgan McSweeney is convinced that things like cutting welfare are popular with the broader public”
I can only speak about the USA and give opinions from the people I have talked to about in Florida.
The ‘broader public” does not want cuts to “welfare” (or “social services in the USA), they actually want increase funding. However, they want that increase funding to go to services for the “US tax paying citizens” already here and legal.
The “broader public” do not want funds spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels or public housing. The “broader public” do not want funds spent on medical care for asylum seekers or illegal immigrants. As a matter of fact, the “broader public” do not want medical care given to asylum seekers or illegal immigrants unless they can privately pay. The same is true for childcare or specialized education programs for asylum seekers or illegal immigrants.
What the “broader public” wants is for more social spending that will directly benefit them such as increased subsidy to their indigent mother-in-law in the nursing home, more spending on mass transportation so their cooks, house cleaners, yard workers, landscapers and nannies can more easily get to their house or houses and more spending on education to build more elementary schools (K-5) so elementary schools (K-5) serve a smaller number of students more closely tide to their Postal (“Zip” in the USA) Code which in 80% of cases raises the value of the home(s) or properties they own.
As we all know there are “direct” benefits and “indirect benefits to most increased public spending. In the USA, the “broader public” is fed-up with spending that is “Indirect” and only produces benefits for society as a whole or will take years for the benefit to reach them. Ins the USA, “broader public” wants increased public spending that will produce an immediate “direct tangible benefit” to them or their household.
Many “swing voters” voted for Trump in 2024 because they believed that Trump was there only hope for immediate “direct tangible benefit” to them or their household. Many “swing voters'” actually liked Biden (more than Obama; with Harris is a completely different story) but thought his polices were taking too long to reach fruition and/or would never produce “direct tangible benefit” to them and their household.
Thanks
Starmer and co have seen how much money Blair and co have made after leaving office, mostly from the right wing billionaires. They want to show their right wing credentials in belief that it will help them get a piece of that action. What is good for the UK and the people in it is of no real interest, they will loose the next election to Reform or whoever, but then it is cash in time.
This is about the only explanation I can think of for the complete abandonment of any moral principles they may have had.
I too can barely believe the daily pronouncements of this “Labour” government….so ugly and hateful, so mean and divisive. Even just in recent days the massive cuts to the health service and the withdrawl of the possibility of citizenship for refugees
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/11/i-can-no-longer-see-a-future-in-the-uk-new-citizenship-guidance-shuts-out-refugees
I have to steel myself to read the the news, let alone listen to the complacent tones of those announcing the latest debacle. They should be angry!!
What angers or upsets me most is that before the election I had some hope for a change of narrative and policy ….that hope quickly evaporated.
Everything of value just continues to crumble around us. Hard not to despair.
Judith, newsreaders are not allowed to be angry; they have to be neutral, or appear to be so, whether we know them to be so or not, deep dpwn. It’s a ridiculous rule.
Indeed larry!
I can, though, recall a few occasions when a raised eyebrow has been very expressive!
I was thinking more of the journalists and commentators, particularly on the BBC and other MSM who seem unable to ask seaching questions about the consequences of such policies, suggest alternative positions and maybe even point out the predicament of those people most affected.
Here’s another blast on the McTeam’s desperate dogwhistle –
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/11/english-test-among-range-of-labour-measures-to-control-immigration
Tougher English tests for immigrants, says Starmer.
Perhaps we need honesty tests for politicians?
Maybe rephrase this as a proposed English language test for politicians.
We need to test:
1) The words may appear to be English but are they word salad?
2) When asked a question, the answer may appear to be in English, but has it any relation to the question asked?
3) The statement may appear to be in English, but does it bear any relation to reality?
4) The promise may appear to be in English, but is there any chance it will be fulfilled?
Any further suggestions?
I like that
I sense a video coming on….
As Doctor McCoy might have said, ‘it’s English , Jim , but not as we know it.
Comparing the politicians answer to a generative AI using these metrics, would be interesting – I suspect the AIs will win. Alternatively, or in addition, ask the AIs to produce a critique of the politicians words using these metrics.
And/Or Local Authorities could employ carers and run care homes, cutting out the shareholders and paying decent wages.
The only problem is that it upsets the shareholders and means funding things properly.
More radically what about some sort of ‘workforce planning’ coupled with population projections and a plan to meet our needs
In Newcastle, where I worked for UNISON, their last local authority care provisions were privatised about mid 2000’s, much later than further south. I argued until I was exhausted that using private providers would cost more and also lead to reduced wages and terms and conditions.
They didn’t care or were too blind to see the consequences of their actions. I really cannot see them reversing that position now, even if it is the most logical thing to do.
I was almost speechless with anger when I read this latest nonsense last night.
I am now very saddened that the Labour Party has degenerated into a place where the likes of George Osborne and Nick Clegg would be comfortable in it.
I also noticed that 40 Labour MPs (including a couple who don’t have the whip) are voting against the benefit cuts.
Could we be seeing the emergence of a new party of the left?
Labour is finished for me.
https://labouroutlook.org/2025/05/09/lets-stop-such-pernicious-cuts-to-disability-support-rachael-maskell-mp/
Here’s one of those labour MPs against the cuts. Never saw Rachel Maskell as a rebel, but well done, Rachel.
Maskell is a committed Chritian, and quite evangelical, which makes her hard work on some issues, but she also has that rare thing, principles.
I was speechless. This is a sector that has already been decimated by the needed hike in the minimum wage and the completely unnecessary NI hikes. Our local care home in rural Devon has just put up it’s fees by £80/week to cover these. Even in Devon it relies on immigrant labour. I have plenty of white British friends who work in the care sector, but there are not enough of them meet the need. Fees will go up further and homes will close. How does this help anyone? The so called pool of available workers include people like me, in their 60s with a back injury from my nursing days. I’m no longer fit for such work and who is going to care for me in the years to come?
Labour is providing the alternative on Friday
It scares me
It’s not just horrible. It makes absolutely no sense and there will be no winners. Adult social care is already the biggest drain on local authority finances and this will just make the problem worse. I cannot compute who thinks this is a good idea.
Despair – and yes Richard – anger.
Combination of (maybe deliberate) ignorance and proto fascism.
The narrative is that there are millions who could work but wont – and are living the life of riley on benefits.
Have we actually heard any proper analysis of what has happened since Brexit and the pandemic – and coolly shown how and why migration is 3 times higher than it was when we were in the EU?
Arent many care providers – off shore companies in tax havens?
I think you will find many if these so called economically inactive are either family carers, or long term sick. I have a lot of friends in their early 60s who would have been retired before they hiked the pension age that are not well enough to work but can’t claim Universal Credit because they have working partners. And that is before you factor in ageism and how difficult it is to get a good job when you are over 50.
How reliable are the statistics on immigration? We know how many visas and work permits we offer and how many people apply for asylum, and we we can try to count irregular arrivals on small boats etc. But do we have a good handle on how many people leave each year? Are they overstaying, or silently leaving?
We are heading for a crunch in social care. Most British people don’t want to do it, at least for the low wages on offer. Councils can’t pay enough to allow operators to increase wages much more. And there are already shortages in provision. I suspect standards will fall because that is the only way to stay in business, by cutting corners, and some operators will close because they just can’t make it work.
We are also heading for a crunch in universities. Fees for domestic students have not kept up with inflation. If we increasingly deter overseas students the funding models will just fail.
I’m sure there are many “high skilled” trades that we are already short of, and the UK has been deficient in practical training and apprenticeship for decades. Bricklayers, electricians, welders, etc. What sort of “degree level” qualifications are we expecting?
The cracks are there already. With a strong enough push the edifice could just come crashing down.
A great deal to agree with.
Pandering to Reform is just soooo wrong – morally and practically.
Just ignore Farage and get on with fixing public services in the UK. Labour has 4 years to do this before there is a national vote on whether they have succeeded. The only acknowledgement of Reform should be pointing out how badly they do now that they actually control some 10 local councils.
Finally, away from morality and politics I don’t get the logic. First, I hear “we need immigration to do the jobs that current residents won’t do” …. then in the next breath we exclude the people that would come and do these jobs. Second, I hear “we want a high skill, high pay economy”… then import high skilled foreigners rather than train locals. The implication is that local folk will be working in the fields and care homes on minimum wage while being managed by foreign graduates on higher salaries. Is this what Labour wants?
But, deep down, there is huge problem – a failure to respect the dignity and importance of our lowest paid workers, whoever they are – have we forgotten COVID so quickly?
As with Andwew’s comment, a great deal to agree with
I read a response to this (I think it was on BlueSky) which made a logical projection on one of the likely longer term impacts of this. The suggestion was that this will result in fewer care homes, and return the responbility for caring back to families. The post went on to say that the likelihood is that this responsibility is likely to fall more heavily on women, requiring them to give upi careers and remain home to look after the elderly and imfirm members of their families.
Could this be a hidden goal of this policy? After all, we are watching the rise of Gilead in America
Quite possibly
I don’t think James Meadway is right about a lot (though he’s less wrong than a lot of economic commentators in the UK) but he put forward that Labour’s goal is to ‘rotate’ the role of the state. That is to say to focus on investment and industrial strategy (through public-private partnerships and slush-funds ofc – this is Neolabour) but give up the really expensive things like welfare, social care, and healthcare and leave them to ‘the market’. Which in practice means leaving things to families.
I think there is reason to think that at least some aspect of that is true, given what they’ve done so far.
I don’t think driving women out of work is a policy objective, but they’re not too fussed if that’s the end result. Similarly they don’t care that welfare cuts (especially cuts to Access To Work subsidies) will drive disabled people out of work. I suspect if they thought they could get away with it, they’d get rid of the state pension and put that money into more subsidies for private pensions (The City).
Education is a wierd one, in that they seem to consider it investment, hence them raising taxes on private schools to put towards state schools, but also they’re seemingly willing to let universities go bust (leaving them to ‘the market’) so it’s unclear what they’re thinking there – perhaps that too many people are going to university? ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ is a common right wing trope.
If that is his offering he is about as far from his supposedly class based roots as he can be
Along with the destruction of the NHS. No one thus far appears to have commented that the collapse of social care will have a major impact on the NHS which is already on its knees and struggles due to long delays in discharging patients due to lack of social care and more recently more budget cuts from this utterly useless government.
Good point.
They have already wounded the NHS which can neither recruit enough doctors and nurses, nor train enough; plus the latest budget cuts which, like 2015, will again leave newly qualified doctors without training posts. Now a social care fiasco beckons.
When will they admit that Britain needs free movement? How about leadership? And when will they recognise that Britain’s reputation is now so poor that more Brits would probably leave than Europeans choose to work in Britain, given reciprocal free movement?
When will they admit that Britain benefited hugely from the EU Dublin Regulation?
Liars.
There are doctors in the UK, and nurses.
The NHS is sacking them as fast as it can.
I hope that by “The NHS” you mean NHS England, or do you have more up-to-date information that shows this is now happening in Scotland too?
I do mean NHS England
Apologies.
Our nation has benefitted from colonialism.
We already employ too many of the best qualified doctors, nurses and others including care workers from poorer nations – who need them much more than we do.
There is also a chance to pay something back – or to be generous anyway – and offer training for care workers and others.
Could we aspire to some magnanimity? It could even be regarded as ‘soft power’ and contribute to a beneficial trading relationship.
Agreed….we can only repay with training
It is disgusting and repulsive from McSweeney and his ‘team’. I am avoiding the ‘big immigration policy announcement’ today, as I want to keep my sanity and not get angry!
The only thing we can do is vote Green or Lib Dem instead of Labour (if living in England), and Plaid in Wales and SNP in Scotland – en mass. (I’m hoping it won’t be too long before the Lib Dems overtake the Tories in the polls and maybe even Labour?)
The question will be: will McSweeney go first (be sacked or resign – either would be very welcome), or will it be Starmer?
As we’ve seen in recent months, billionaires like Elon Musk have been backing far-right parties that scapegoat immigrants for society’s problems. The purpose is clear: to divert public attention away from the fact that they are the ones sucking off national wealth, and to redirect frustration toward vulnerable communities. The Starmer government is likely aware of this agenda, which may explain its shift to the right—aiming to appease the wealthy elite. The hope, it seems, is to follow in the footsteps of Blair, David Cameron, Liz Truss, and others who cashed in after leaving office. Labour is on course to lose the next election to Reform, and if that happens, we can expect more of the same—only worse. All UK governments have followed the same model since Thatcher, who—alongside Reagan—introduced trickle-down economics, a policy that never worked for ordinary people but greatly benefited the wealthy by concentrating existing assets in their hands. That’s why I’m not optimistic that any government beholden to billionaires will ever seriously consider taxing wealth—unless we reach the point of revolution.
Do you want power? Do you want to be Prime Minister?
1. Learn to count votes. That means knowing who, *by name*, will vote for you in each ward, each constituency.
2a. Identify (polling, focus groups) the Values of the voters you need to add to your vote count in order to win. Publish policies (suitably vague) to win those votes and then add them to your count (see 1 above). Values matter. Party does not – as long as it is a unified Party.
2b. If you still cannot count enough votes, stop spending resources in that ward / constituency. Spend only where it gives you the result you need.
3. Invest in increasing levels of *personalised* publicity as an election approaches to reinforce the link between your Party and the Values you have identified (see 2 above).
4. Get *your* vote out on polling day.
5. Win.
To get into government, one simply has to understand and subscribe to the Values of the voters you need on election day.
The art of political *education* has been surrendered by the Unions and most MPs. Tressel’s philanthropists don’t spent their lunchtimes discussing the wrongs of the system any more. The political magazines are booming online – but there’s no way of knowing how many read the whole set of opinions and news and how many just read the week’s headline piece. Even when gifted (cf The Joy of Tax and your local barista, Richard) nobody today can read a political-education publication without being considered “odd”.
Of course, the more the reinforcement, the less the ability to debate alternatives. Labour won because they accepted the status quo of the voters, and *that* they dare not change.
Thank you, Richard.
Over the week-end, one of the farming tv programmes cited a National Farmers’ Union figure that a third of farm workers are from overseas. Two Filipinos working on a Scottish dairy farm were interviewed. I have observed similar in the Thames valley and East Anglia. It’s increasingly the case in horse racing.
I live in mid-Buckinghamshire and come across overseas workers on the HS2 and east west railway projects. Many of the managers have brought their families.
This is undoubtedly true of farming around where I live
A majority of those working on the farms are foreign workers – often Bulgarian around here
The Reform voters who dmeand that these peiople leave would never want the jobs that they do. That’s a fact.
And for the record, I did work on farms and in market gardens in my youth. It was dangerous, hard and a lot of fun (even when I rolled a tractor with no roll bar: both the tractor (a Fordson, or as my sons called them when they were young ‘a daddy tractor’) and I survived with the odd scratch or two). I suspect regualtion would not allow that now and so no one gets any experience of these things.
Disgusting. Still, what else would we expect?
Presumably the ban on care workers also extends to care assistants in the NHS? We have 140,000 vacancies in the care sector. That includes domiciliary care, in people’s homes. Not that anyone will be able to afford that, because the PIP changes will result in destitution – carers will lose their allowances, and claimants will lose access to council social care.
Turns out, you see, that the overwhelming majority of cuts to PIP will actually affect people in their 50s and 60s – a recent FOI revealed that. So there won’t be anyone to help your mother or grandmother in a care home or in her own home.
Incidentally, Starmer can’t sack McSweeney. Not just because the PM is an original-thought vacuum, but also because McSweeney’s wife, the newly elected Imogen Walker, was immediately given the plum job of PPS to Rachel Reeves. No political experience, no economic background, yet days into the Parliament, she gets the job. I wonder why?
So McSweeney won’t go, because his stich up of the political grouping formerly known as Labour is joined at the hip (and by marriage) to Reeves’ fiscal rules. I expect he dreamt them up originally anyway, so his wife will ensure Reeves doesn’t deviate from her husband’s incomprehensible policies of hatred and division.
The entire Tory con, that included Brexit, was designed to keep UK wages low and break the power of our unions. Those coming from the EU to work had the same rights as UK workers, so Brexit ended that. Allowing companies to hire overseas workers paid 20% less than those in the UK workforce has eliminated any incentive to train or gain further qualifications as cheaper labour can be scavenged from around the globe. This morally bankrupt policy continues to decimate healthcare programs in developing countries as we steal doctors and nurses they could ill afford to train.
I saw the damaging consequences of this in a ten country tour of Sub Saharan Africa in 2009: that 20% incentive to recruit from abroad has to go ASAP. After having visited operating theatres in all of those countries, I met a nurse anesthetist who had trained locally before working in the NHS and subsequently returning to Blantyre, Malawi. We collaborated on an alternative that would be beneficial to both nations and the citizens of both countries. This evolved to become the ‘Collaborative Circular Migration’ files, a copy of which I sent to you some time ago for review. I know you are overwhelmed by similar requests, but there is no more important time for you to consider what I wrote.
The first component of the plan would have the UK invest Foreign Aid funds in training facilities in select, stable developing countries where UK medical trainees could receive more affordable training than they would here in the UK. They would learn from the ground up, without the heavy reliance on advanced equipment that is available to them here. Ideally they would be paired throughout their overseas training with members of the local cohort of medical trainees, in the hope of establishing a colegate bond that might extend into their future careers.
We know this training already meets NHS standards or we would not be scavenging overseas doctors and nurses in the first place. Before I left on my ten country tour I was told I should: “prepare to be humbled’. Doctors trained in challenging environments, relying on very basic equipment in overwhelmed public facilities, become remarkably intuitive and accomplished professionals. That is what I witnessed in hospital after hospital on my tour, where the excessive demands on staff produced confident, resourceful doctors and nurses with very high levels of skill in the procedures they undertook. UK trainees would benefit from this experience and bring much needed support to the healthcare systems we have decimated thus far.
The Collaborative Circular Migration solution for the supply of care workers is just as pragmatic: a significant win – win solution that is desperately needed right now. We need to create a fixed term ‘ELR Visa’ that could be used by workers in the care sector as well as other areas of need like the harvesting of crops. The ELR ‘Earn, Learn and Return’ Visa would firstly minimize living expenses, by offering an ‘all found’ option including meals and communal accommodation. This would require single applicants to make compromises to their independence in the short term in order to maximize the benefits of the program. While taking their living expenses into consideration the wage they receive, after expenses are accounted for, should not undercut the UK workforce.
The objective of this program is for short term ELR Visa holders to save money as well as sending remittance money home through a dedicated ELR bank account that would not sting them on transfer fees. Any money they chose to save in their ELR account would. receive at top-up when paid out in the country of origin after their return, incentivising their departure when the visa expired. This UK sponsored top-up would constitute a legitimate component of our Foreign Aid budget. While working in the UK they would be encouraged to take targeted mini training courses relevant to their community needs overseas. Completing this learning would be rewarded with payments into the account that would be paid after their return home.
All asylum seekers should be placed in this ELR Visa scheme thus enabling them to work and be housed, without placing a burden on the taxpayer, while they await a decision on their claim. If their claim is denied, they would not return home empty handed, but there might also be an enhanced possibility of resettlement in another country as they would arrive with funds and skills. A similar communal living for work bargain could be made available to low-skilled UK workers who would benefit from the ability to save for their future independence. This is just one of the positive alternatives for young people in the UK that I have outlined in the Collaborative Circular Migration files.
The Tory instituted slow-down of asylum claim processing, along with the ongoing lack of opportunity to work legally, was an intentional way of forcing migrants into black market employment to undercut unionized workers. This agenda was a deliberate policy to establish lower wages in the UK and break the power of unions, while paying off the Tory elite donors who own hotels housing asylum seekers, at the outrageous expense of our Foreign Aid budget! The contracts for such hotel accommodation guarantee payment up till 2029, clearly demonstrating that there was zero intention to stem the flow of grossly exploited migrants!
Policies outlined in Collaborative Circular Migration are designed to benefit all parties. This will also ‘drip feed’ Foreign Aid funds directly into impoverished communities in developing countries, where they can accomplish the greatest transformation. This also enhances stability in developing countries, reducing the potential for internal strife and conflict. We know that this is true, because remittance money has done so much more to improve lives in the developing world than our misdirected Foreign Aid budget, which is frequently plundered by corrupt governments when it is not misspent in the UK!
The urgency of finding an acceptable solution that does not pander to the divisive rants of Nigel Farage has never been more pressing. While you have elaborated on the problem that the latest Labour lurch to the right will create, we need solutions as this one toxic issue threatens to derail democracy in the UK. Just as your ‘Taxing Wealth Report’ offers solutions to our economic woes, I believe Collaborative Circular Migration can offer a positive win-win way to transform our broken immigration system. Please, please try to find the time to review these proposals, even if they require extensive revision, as a potential framework of ideas they might offer a way forward.
Thanks
So going forward you think those who voted for Brexit or vote for Reform or the Conservative Party as racist and fascist? Now you want to add to that list those who in the future vote Labour? That’s probably 80-85% of the population. You might need to rethink your definitions somewhat.
38% of people who voted in July 2024 voted Tory or Reform.
Labour did not show racist tendencies at the time.
But, turnout was 60%.
And only 86% of people are on the electoral register.
So, that 38% is 19.6% of the population.
It’s generally thought the far right can win up to 30% of a population.
Is my claim reasonable then? Most definitely.
Yours is just crass.
From Wiki: “Imogen Walker worked as an actor, a political consultant, and a vice president of the RSPCA, the animal welfare charity. She also served as a ward councillor and deputy finance leader for the London Borough of Lambeth.[4] She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a master’s in mental philosophy.”
As you say – skill/ knowledge for being PPS to Rachel Reeves – absolutely zero
Astounding how MPs are so utterly unqualified for. the jobs they do these days.
Within the ideological continuum that is Labour/Conservative/Reform the electorate is essentially being given a choice as to which variety of racism they wish to indulge in – Skimmed (Labour), Semi Skimmed (Conservative) or Full Fat (Reform).
That’s about it
I love this blog, for your honesty Richard and so many brilliant contributors – it gives me hope, though if I was honest, I sink deeper every day into despair.
For the third year running, our rent has gone up £100 a month? What can we do? Nothing, it seems we just have to take it.
My blood boils when I read that McTweeny thinks people support the welfare cuts. No one I have spoken to supports it at all. So, ok I am middle class, but no one in my circle thinks its anything but cruel. And yet – that idea is put out there by the usual suspects to make it seem ok and broadly supportive.
What are these people really really doing? What is the game here? To bankrupt everyone and get everyone on digital database? Impoverish just about everyone? There is not one single thing they have done since the squirmed into power that has improved any ones lives.
Why don’t the decent labour politicians stands up and say enough is enough? I don’t believe they are all craven for money and lust for power.
There is much that I agree with you about in that
I write to highlight your situation
My last job was in care. It is very rewarding, although of course not financially. If someone we love needs care, we want someone to give that care, who likes the work and gets fair pay. The care sector has been losing people who need to find better paid jobs, amongst other reasons. I had colleagues from overseas struggling with immigration requirements including sponsorship, and the loneliness of being far from family.
This new policy is such a disaster. People do not stay in care if they don’t take to it. I now fear people will be pushed into care work by the benefits system, many of whose will find it is not for them. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I don’t think this is completely on topic. But…
Been following the Meidas Brothers on Substack for a while now. They also make YouTube videos, I watch when I have the time – they have some interesting guests sometimes. I have to say that they remind me a little of you, Richard, in some ways.
Here’s one of their latest on Substack:
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/critical-monday-message-from-meidasstay
They are very popular in US, have taken over from Fox News as most watched! So that’s some good news! 🙂
They look interesting.
I hope to be consistent with his new draconian restrictive immigration rules Starmer will ensure there is no special dispensation given to foreign nuclear construction workers to come into Britain to make up for the shortage of skilled construction workers. At present a third of the 26,000 Hinkley Point C nuclear construction workforce are from abroad, and Starmer wants to build a similar giant Gigawatt-size reactor at Sizewell C as well as launching a fleet of so-called Small Modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) across Great Britain.
“Care workers will no longer be recruited from overseas as part of a crackdown on visas for lower-skilled workers”
Why do politicians and so many others think that providing medical and social (custodial in the USA) care is unskilled or lower-skilled work. People in the USA who do this work may not be required to sit an exam to hold a license but this is not unskilled work. I have a friend who works for an agency in this industry in the USA that this friend told me it takes a six moths to a year to train a care worker who can work unsupervised. If the trained worker then decides take courses and the sit the exam to become a CMT (Certified Medical Technician), a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) or LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) the agency is now back to “square-1” if they are not sponsoring the employee with a training-education-work contract.
Where do the English politicians think these workers are going to come from which from my reading of posts on this blog the UK (read England) really has no training scheme to train indigenous workers are care givers? Recruiting and training people in London and Belfast may not be a problem but what about care workers needed in the Hebrides, Shetland, Cornwall, Cumbria and etc… etc..
Guess what!!! As more people retire and move to more rural and suburban parts of the UK (Hebrides, Shetland, Cornwall, Cumbria and etc… etc..) for a lower cost of living to stretch their retirement funds, more care workers are going to be required in the rural parts of the UK (Hebrides, Shetland, Cornwall, Cumbria and etc… etc..).
Again, where are these people going come from and where & how will they be trained.
No one knows, is the answer
It really bothers me that politicians, both OK and USA, make pronouncements on what “they are going to do” but have no workable detailed plan to actually solve the problem or even “a problem”.
If you do not have a workable detailed plan to actually solve the problem or “a problem”, you should keep your big yap shut or, better yet, not run for political office in the first place.
Agreed
This is personal. My wire has dementia. I cared for her on my own for the first four years, but for the last five I have needed help with her care. She is now in the later stages, and is bedbound. Two care assistants, usually from an African country attend to her three times a day, and do a great job. How I’m going to cope is this service is withdrawn I have no idea. I also try never to use the hate word, but I’m being severely tested. The present day Labour Party seem determined to make the lives of vulnerable people in the U.K even more difficult than it is already. How most of their M.Ps live with themselves I don’t know, inficting more suffering on the very people they were elected to care for. Disgusting.
Alex
You have my sympathy. The demand on you must be enormous. Good luck, and to you your wife.
Richard
Alex, I’m so sorry that you’re having to carry this burden. It’s hard enough to watch the person you love the most slowly disappear, but then to have the prospect of essential care being withdrawn is horrifying. Husbands and wives of people with dementia have to endure a kind of prolonged premature bereavement; someone’s outward appearance is achingly familiar but all the “personhood” slowly disappears, distorting intimate memories and erasing some of the past.
I once worked as the lowest of the low in a nursing home for end-stage dementia patients. OK, it was 20 ish years ago, but I was only paid £3.10 an hour. I was completely invisible to visitors – a non-person. Yet the care we gave the residents was the best possible.
It is not the fault of recipients of vital care, or their relatives, that we have reached a point where British people think a job in care is beneath them. Somewhere along the way, we allowed that to happen. Neither is it the fault of disabled people that the welfare system is in need of reform. In both instances, the people for whom those systems and organisations were created are now seeing them crumble to dust in real time.
Thanks, Hannah