My interview with the Bruges Group

 

31 Comments

  1. Mark B
    May 24, 2023

    Good morning.

    Nice interview covering all the topics made here. Trouble is, the time has come to look at what the other political parties are offering, as it has become clear to all that the current government will be gone.

    1. Lifelogic
      May 24, 2023

      Seems so but alas to be replaced by even worse.

      Yet sensible voters are crying out for abolition of the net zero religion, growth, lower simpler & fairer taxes, far less regulation, a real Brexit, public services that actually work, cheap reliable on demand energy, more houses, road unblocking, pot hole fixing and fair unrigged markets in education, energy, transport, healthcare, cars broadcasting… also an end to the wars on motorists (& the ULEZ taxes), small businesses, landlord and thus tenants, the self employed and for sensible only levels of higher skilled immigration.

      So basically what is wanted and needed is the complete opposite of Sunak or Starmer/SNP agendas.

      1. iain gill
        May 24, 2023

        lifelogic, correct that is a winning manifesto. but whoever says it needs to be able to convince people they will actually deliver. when the senior civil service is the real “enemy within” and will go full out to stop any of that.

        probably we need a new party to emerge.

        or there will be serious trouble, one way or another.

        1. Jason Cartwright
          May 26, 2023

          We won’t be voting ourselves out of this globalist mess.

  2. Bloke
    May 24, 2023

    SJR’s image is reversed left to right on screen, as if viewed via a mirror.

    1. Ian+wragg
      May 24, 2023

      So the quest to rid the party if the right wing continues aided by Fishy and Chicom
      Raab has jumped before pushed.
      It’s a good job Farage is making a come back. Maybe he’ll stiffen your spine.

    2. Lifelogic
      May 24, 2023

      So if a mirror reverses left and right why does it not reverse top and bottom?

      1. hefner
        May 24, 2023

        Are you for real, LL? Because it is a plane symmetry aka Euclidean plane, not to a symmetry about a point. That’s GCSE physics.

      2. Bloke
        May 24, 2023

        It depends on your point of view. If you stand on a mirror an observer would see your image inverted.

  3. Bloke
    May 24, 2023

    The spelling error in the disclaimer at the outset was not a good intro. In contrast the interview embraced a wide range of important subjects answered in depth with fine quality presentation of facts. It contains valuable info many would learn from and gain by following its well-reasoned good sense; typical of SJR performance clarity in communication.

  4. Javelin
    May 24, 2023

    Yesterday you pointed out that the cost of settling an immigrant was ÂŁ250,000. Multiply that by one year of migration, you assumed 500,000. Total ÂŁ125 billion to settle one year of migrants.

    If each person pays on average ÂŁ5500 in tax then ÂŁ125 billion takes out 22 million tax payers. No wonder our taxes are at record levels.

    If you take the Economist magazine study of Scandinavian migrants those from North Africa, Middle East and south Central Asia on average never contribute net tax during their life times. That’s millions people who need supporting. Each one of these people take one or more British tax payers out the system.

    Of course many migrants do benefit the country, but not all migrants. A Government should not be able to give away citizenship like free sweets. But they do.

    Even if we don’t know the exact figures the most approximate, most optimistic interpretations shows that unvetted mass immigration has caused huge economic harm lasting many decades.

    When will the penny drop.

    1. dixie
      May 24, 2023

      The penny will never drop as there are no real, significant consequences for those responsible.
      We are only the majority voters and taxpayers, but it is not our country.

      Hint: it doesn’t matter who we vote for they as are always outnumbered and usurped by those parts of government we have no vote for.

    2. MFD
      May 24, 2023

      Javelin, Give us one “ for instance”where a migrant benefits our country – I do not see any. We Brits are just mugs!

  5. Ashley
    May 24, 2023

    So a study in Israel just calls up 2,000 people at random who had a booster (this after their two vaccines). Circa 30% had reactions so bad they could not continue normal activities and 6 people so badly they were hospitalised. So if you boost 40 million on the same ratio you would hospitalise 120,000 people and yet still our governments jabbed and coerced on while muttering Save and Effective.

    They excluded people who had had Covid already (figure here might quite likely have been even worse for these). See the excellent Daily Sceptic or the Weekly Sceptic podcast for more details.

    1. Richard1
      May 24, 2023

      Sounds like complete nonsense

  6. Lifelogic
    May 24, 2023

    Good points at usual JR.

    A good article from the sensible Peter Lilley on immigration today in the Telegraph.

  7. Dave Andrews
    May 24, 2023

    Sounds like an echo chamber. I agree with just about all of Sir John’s views, but if I was to interview him I would try to be more challenging. Seems like the interviewer was full of his own opinions and just wanted Sir John to back him up.
    I have the same problem with GB News and TalkTV. Yes it’s good to find an alternative to the mainstream liberal left propaganda, but I don’t like the blatant views of the presenters. I’d rather they appeared impartial.

    1. Mark B
      May 24, 2023

      +1

    2. Diane
      May 25, 2023

      Well, there was a good segment on GB News’ Patrick Christys programme 24 May where a Conservative Councillor for Boston, Lincolnshire, often referred to as the Brexit capital of the UK, was invited, and allowed with little interruption or blatant views as you put it, to speak frankly about the numerous impacts of migration & conditions in the area he represents and it made for sad listening. You can probably pick it up on the GBN website later if you care to listen. In fact GBN presenters are on location & reporting today (25/5) from Boston.

  8. Richard1
    May 24, 2023

    In the light of worrying new borrowing numbers a clear opportunity has arisen this am for a beneficial cut in public spending. There is something called the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). An Orwellian name as it seems it does the opposite. It is reported that the QAA is attempting to force politicisation on the teaching of maths, by for example insisting on tendentious political statements irrelevant to and distracting from a student’s understanding of mathematics. How can this be with a Conservative govt? Unsatisfactory as many ministers may be, it cannot be the case there is someone who is a Conservative who has approved this rubbish. So that means it’s the perma-blob which has done it. So the answer is to close the QAA (we managed without it in the past), make all its employees redundant and tell them to go and get productive jobs. And save public money whilst also protecting educational standards.

    1. Mark B
      May 24, 2023

      Good spot.

      Created in 1997 (Hmm. what else happened that year ?), if you go to its Wiki page and look under, ‘Structure and funding’ it provides details about it that are quite illuminating when you think about it.

      This organisation could be the source of many a problem.

      New Labour always boasted that they will be in power even when out of office and this little Easter Egg proves it.

      It and similar organisations should have been gone on day one of the 2010 GE.

  9. glen cullen
    May 24, 2023

    I just wish you were the actual spokesperson for the tory government or even the tory party

  10. formula57
    May 24, 2023

    “..or even better next week, if the government woke up” – yes please!

    It will not though, which is why it just needs to go.

  11. iain gill
    May 24, 2023

    The assumption that the unions would want better utilisation of the native workforce, and reduction of immigrants under cutting them is wrong. Their behaviour in companies like BT over decades has been to spend most of their effort getting an enhanced redundancy payment for the incumbent workers when they get displaced, and actively support the mass import of workers for the outsourcers who are permanently allocated to BT once here. So over time all the good incumbents take the payoff, the lower quality ones remain, and most of the workforce is actually foreigners working for the outsourcers. This has been going on so long that many of the foreigners have been here so long that they have qualified for British passports, and that distorts the figures as they now show as locals in any analysis of the immigration issue.

  12. iain gill
    May 24, 2023

    John, your narrative about low skilled workers = bad, and high skilled workers = good, is wrong.
    It matters not a jot where in the skills spectrum a worker is, if they are coming here to undercut locals, then it’s bad for the UK. It discourages locals from studying or training in that skillset, so much so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that we have skills shortages and so there is a demand for more foreign workers.
    Wherever you set you pay threshold to allow people in, if they are primarily coming here cos they will work for 10, 20, 30 or more K less than a Brit would or can, then coming here is bad.
    There are lots of examples that I know where they salary for a Brit would be 100 K, but we have massed numbers of foreign nationals imported here by the consultancies and outsourcers who can be subbed into any big company for less than it costs to hire a Brit.
    Then we have perverse tax incentives, like first year in the country completely free of national insurance. Coming in with a large family the kids will all get free schooling, often worth more to the worker than the money they are being paid. Or bringing is a seriously sick relative with expensive pre existing medical condition, which again can be worth more money to the worker than what they are being paid.
    Another key problem with this model of populating our workforce is the mass theft of the best British intellectual property that it leads to. To be a leading first world nation we cannot charge commodity labour rates on the world market, for our products and services. We have got to be higher quality, never tech, better supported, product and service wise than the rest of the world, and that depends primarily on having the best intellectual property and protecting it, and having the best quality workforce.
    The problem with using commodity priced labour here, and not the highest quality, is that it shows the world that we are not worth a price premium for our goods and services. It shows them that they may as well buy direct from lower cost base lower quality countries. The problem with being infiltrated with masses of people who know and pass on our best intellectual property to other countries is that it allows other countries to produce the same goods and services, and undermines our leading position, and destroys our ability to charge premium prices.
    As an economy trying to sell to the world at commodity prices this country has no chance, our electricity is too dear, our safety kit costs too much, our anti pollution kit costs too much, our following copyright and patent etc laws costs a lot, and we are competing with countries which have none of these costs. We cannot compete on price, we have to compete on quality, innovation, never tech, better support, etc.

  13. iain gill
    May 24, 2023

    I have worked abroad a lot over the years, in many countries, such as USA, New Zealand, Italy, Belgium.

    I always went with genuinely unique skills that would never be found in the local workforce there.
    I never wanted, or expected to get, rights to permanent residency in that country.
    I always paid more than my fair share my medical care in those countries, and had full fat insurance for even the worst medical contingencies.
    I never expected that country to pay for my childrens schooling.
    I sometimes took a partner, but they were basically going in on the same terms as a tourist anyways, not staying longer than a tourist visa would allow, spending for their upkeep entirely out of their own money, having full fat medical insurance, never expecting or wanting to transition to permanent residency of that country.

    I often trained the local workforce as I was there.

    I cost a lot more than hiring any near equivalents from the local workforce, I was there not because I was cheap, but because I knew stuff and could genuinely help them.

    These are all reasonable tests to apply to people coming here to work.

    1. Mark B
      May 24, 2023

      Ian

      My late mother was a recruitment agent in the petro-chem industry. She found jobs for people all over the world. They, like you, where expected make suitable provisions for themselves as the host country would not. Sometimes the client might, but there was no guarantee. At the end of the contract, and unless they managed to secure an extension, ALL had to leave.

  14. turboterrier
    May 24, 2023

    Little comfort to realise its not only this country with a parliament completely out of touch.
    Another hard-hitting letter about people trying to control what they don’t understand

    Ireland Squanders €1.3 Billion on Wind Power & Gets World’s Most Expensive Power In Return
    Ryan’s Much-Heralded Wind Energy Would be World’s Most Expensive at First Auction
    Gript
    Mirin De Barra
    http://stopthesethings.com/2023/05/24/ireland-squanders-e1-3-billion-on-wind-power-gets-worlds-most-expensive-power-in-return/

    How many other areas of our lives are affected by the same line of thinking?

    1. Mark
      May 25, 2023

      The actual average bid was €86.05/MWh, which is about ÂŁ75/MWh. That is of course in money of today, and subject to indexation throughout the build period and the operational life. However, it is instructive to compare it with the AR5 auction for GB offshore wind. That is limited by an Administrative Strike Price or maximum bid level of ÂŁ44/MWh in 2012 money, which indexes up to ÂŁ58.85/MWh today. That needs a more than 25% uplift to match the Irish price, which offers less harsh terms in other ways too. Any applicants who qualified to bid in the auction will have been notified that their applications are approved: by 2nd June we should get a handle on just how few applicants there have been. The reality is that wind farms are much more costly than they were a couple of years ago: raw material costs have soared, and so have manufacturing costs due to higher energy bills etc. On top of that financing is much more expensive now we have left behind the ZIRP world. The government risks few or no bids with its unrealistic assumption that costs were going to continue to fall and that a contract put option is the same as a fixed price – incidentally the parameters for the auction were set on work done in 2018-20 according to AR5 documentation. Of course 2020 marked the bottom of the cycle with ultra low energy prices, and manufacturing desperate for orders in a lockdown world.

      Meanwhile most existing windfarms continue to rake in fantastic profits, with ROCs and CFDs and REGOs insulated from tax.

  15. Niwa Limbu
    May 24, 2023

    Never intended for it to be an echo chamber, mind you as an interviewer im just trying to steer the topics of the interview and give a fundemental basis for SJR to answer with.
    I would rather have right wing questions with right wing answers than give SJR questions he has no meat to talk about.

    If you have any advise do email me at
    Niwa@brugesgroup.com
    Would love to hear improvement to my work

    1. Cuibono
      May 25, 2023

      I thought you conducted a really lovely interview.
      Wouldn’t change a thing!

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