Do not bring in more people to cover “temporary” skills shortages

Whitehall thinks the answer to every lobby from business over shortage of employees is to grant permission to bring in more people under a Temporary Skills shortage designation. For years we have had these temporary shortages of care workers, farmers, medics and others. We have also watched as many more categories have been added. It is high time we remedied more of the shortages ourselves. Temporary should mean temporary.

The cheap imported labour model has several major drawbacks

  1. It keeps wages down, making it less likely for the lower paid jobs that UK residents will want to do them
  2. It deters investment in productivity enhancing machinery and computing power, reinforcing a low productivity low wage outcome
  3. It imposes large extra costs on taxpayers to meet the bills for top up benefits, subsidised housing and a range of public service provision for the new comers.
  4. When it comes to public services it brings more demand as well as some labour supply to meet demand for services. You need then to invite in more health workers to take care of the other workers you have added to the population.
  5. Keeping more UK residents out of work is costly for the state.

 

The government did show how you can cure an acute shortage in the way it tackled the shortage of drivers created by the big move to on line shopping over covid, and by the UK’s net zero model of importing more and more things to cut the UK national CO 2 output.  The government did put in  a lot more capacity to train and licence more people as  truck drivers, and allowed the market to put wages up. There was also necessary discussion of improving facilities for longer distance drivers so they can get a meal and decent rest facilities en route.

Sector by sector where currently the government is granting thousands of permits for imported labour it needs to have better defined and more urgently implemented strategies for attracting and training people already settled here. I have been urging these, and urging the DWP Secretary of State to roll out his promising plans more rapidly than the civil service is currently allowing. Get on with it.

164 Comments

  1. formula57
    January 20, 2024

    So yet again the maladroit policies of this rotten government harm us all. How many more examples will there be? When will it stop?

    1. PeteB
      January 20, 2024

      To add to Sir J’s list, it is morally wrong to bring health specailists from developing world countries who have worse healthcare than the UK (I know it’s hard to believe, but it can happen).

      1. Hope
        January 20, 2024

        Sunak is so innumerate he is unable to work out that if you import 3.5 million welfare dross that a proportion of them will need medical treatment and increase the waiting list numbers, he thinks it is all about strikes!!

        Meanwhile Home Office allowing illegal immigrant criminals to work and stay in taxpayer funded accommodation as asylum seekers!! JR, your party is beyond disgraceful in the way it is deliberately wrecking our economy, Brexit, public services, culture, nation state and societal norms. Call an election. If any of you had the sense or balls Sunak would be gone. Maria Caulfield is right, getting rid of snake gives you a chance keeping him to lead you into an election disaster is stupidity.

        Other than 11 you all showed your true colours this week, you do not want to take back control of laws borders and money from EU. You want to remain in Lockstep. Worse your party are going to give away further sovereignty to WHO!!

        Reply The bill makes small progress in tge right direction, which is why Labour wanted to vote it down to keep international law in full control.

        1. Timaction
          January 20, 2024

          Sir John,
          More Home Secretaries have been to Rwanda than illegal migrants. None will ever go to Rwanda. France has taken ÂŁ400 million from YOUR Government (Us tax payers) but they still and will keep coming as YOUR Government give them 4* accommodation, food, expenses and now we learn employment. France gives them tents and the EU refuses to stop rubber boats by Customs officers on their borders (An act of war but no retaliatory action by YOUR gutless Government!). Most granted asylum. None ever deported. End of. Why are there pull factors?
          Tice has quoted the legislation that allows for return the same day by the Border farce/RNLI. Why are they not returned to France instead of here when they can be? The games up. Your useless Government hide and pretend the English peoples best interests whilst swamping our Country with immigrants, their families and then children. YOUR Government is busy turning our Country into the 3rd world whilst claiming to represent the English tax payer. NO NO NO. English taxpayers have had enough, NO representation and are discriminated against if you are a white male.

          1. Hope
            January 20, 2024

            There I was wondering how could these illegal criminals entering our country afford to go home at Christmas, but Border Force turned them back. Again, I wondered why. Why not let them return and never apply again? Tory party and govt were encouraging them all here by finding them work while having taxpayer subsidised accommodation!! Sunak claiming ‘to do whatever it takes’ stop the boats!! Sunak serving with integrity again!! Hands up who believes the back stabber?

            How come Border Force always get to help these alleged distressed dinghy’s but French trawlers fishing in our waters never do?

            Why has Sunak given France ÂŁ500 million of taxpayers cash knowing he was going to find them paid work, allow to go back home for Christmas and never deport?

    2. Ian Wraggg
      January 20, 2024

      Congratulations John. Another 3000 skilled, well paid jobs exported to India and China. The only developed country unable to manufacture virgin steel.
      An Indian PM gives and Indian company half a billion quid to cease production so we can import said product from guess where, yes India.
      Your loathing for the electorate was welk known but now it’s becoming blatant. There’s no words to describe your treachery in the pursuit of the ruinous net zero con.

      1. Old Albion
        January 20, 2024

        Another superb victory for ‘net zero’ the Green Zealots and Greta. 2800 individuals kicked out of work in Port Talbot.
        ÂŁ500m given by your Gov. to facilitate this. All on the promise of building one electric arc furnace, running on windmill electricity! (don’t laugh) run by a few dozen workers. And we all know it will never happen. It will be cheaper and easier to import steel from India whilst claiming to have reduced our tiny (1% of global total) CO2 output. Ignoring the fact that India’s CO2 output will increase. As will the CO2 emitted in transporting the steel.
        The policy of the madhouse driven by ignorant dogmatic fools in hock to ignorant dogmatic Greenies.

        1. Ian wragg
          January 20, 2024

          I note Sweden is one of the worlds major steel manufacturers making about half a billion tonnes annually
          I bet Greta isn’t demanding that be halted.

          1. Peter Gardner
            January 21, 2024

            I have found that the average price faced by UK steelmakers for 2023/24 is ÂŁ113 per MWh compared to the German and French prices of ÂŁ61/MWh. That’s a price gap of ÂŁ52/MWh, meaning we pay ÂŁ117m more for our electricity this year than our European competitors.

            https://www.pesmedia.com/reduce-electricity-prices-ahead-of-electric-steel-future-uk-steel#:~:text=The%20average%20price%20faced%20by,year%20than%20our%20European%20competitors.

            Another report states that Sweden’s ‘Green Steel’ pays 35 USD per MWh.

            It is hard to understand why the Government cannot work out what has gone wrong.

        2. Timaction
          January 20, 2024

          It’s a good deal for India and its companies. Appallingly bad for Welsh and English working people. Still they can pray a bit harder on the alter of net zero whilst our Country goes to the dogs.
          Another of the many examples of Tory treachery.

          1. James B
            January 20, 2024

            Even worse treachery by ‘Labour’ which once represented the interests of the less well-off. At the next election, given UK voting patterns, it’ll be a party of the managerial classes (B and C), i.e. by and large the groups who stood for the worst ‘COVID’ tyranny.

            Maybe that’s why MPs speaking out at Andrew Bridgen’s events in parliament have mostly been Conservative, DUP, ex-SNP or Old Lab. In the clips I watched, I saw no New Lab. MPs. Were they told to stay away? Yet they’re the ‘Opposition’.

      2. Hope
        January 20, 2024

        Ian,
        Spot on. National security given away!! Making UK Dependent on hostile nations to provide energy, steel, food etc.

        1. Timaction
          January 20, 2024

          Tory’s don’t do or care about National Security.
          Water, power, energy, steal or any other national security issue sold to any foreign company or interest. All illegals and anyone else allowed here to commit atrocities and never deported as international agreements more important to them, particularly the One Nation Liberal Torys. Armed forces run into the ground. Whilst giving away money to France to secures it’s own borders and plunder our fish. They want to secure the red sea with our Navy but not the Channel. Couldn’t make up how bad the Tory’s/Labour are.

        2. Abigail
          January 20, 2024

          James B.: Did you noice that YouTube has had the effrontery to remove Andrew Bridgen’s debate last week in the House? YouTube is taking it upon itself to decide what we, the electorate, can witness of the work our chosen representatives do on our behalf! It is utterly shocking. Who is pulling their strings?

          1. Cheshire Girl
            January 20, 2024

            I would really like to watch that debate. Does anyone know if there is a link to it, perhaps on Parliament TV , or some other facility.

            Thank you.

          2. Donna
            January 20, 2024
      3. Donna
        January 20, 2024

        +1

        1. Cheshire Girl
          January 20, 2024

          Donna:

          Thats so kind. Thank you.

      4. graham1946
        January 20, 2024

        Yes a PM with more interest in India than the UK and a Chancellor with more interest in China than the UK. This Tata business is to oil the wheels of a free trade agreement with India, which will make us poorer yet. A whole community gets chucked under the bus, the nation loses another manufacturing industry, just to satisfy some theory these idiots have. The only hope for Port Talbot is that a Labour government gets elected and bins the whole thing. I am no longer afraid of a Labour government, it is the Tories, my old party who terrify me.

      5. Original Richard
        January 20, 2024

        Ian Wragg & Old Albion :

        Once we have been de-industrialised to reduce our industrial emissions the next step is to reduce our consumption emissions.

        Hence the Net Zero Strategy does not allow the import of steel because eventually all shipping will be banned.

        See the Government funded UK FIRES report “Absolute Zero” :

        https://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf

        We won’t be building with new steel and concrete. It will be wood, earth and stone with some re-used glass and steel. Hence the requirement to fit Port Talbot steel works with an EAF, although on renewable power it will be very difficult to run without enormous rolling blackouts for the rest of the country.

        1. Sharon
          January 20, 2024

          Original Richard

          I’ve seen that link re UK Fires.

          The statement ‘net zero will de-industrialise the west’ is no joke! That’s exactly what is intended!!!!

          Though quite how we’re to live our lives using technology for pretty much everything, including our time limited currency, social credit system – with limited electricity to power it, beats me!

        2. Mickey Taking
          January 20, 2024

          back to lath and plaster eh?

          1. graham1946
            January 21, 2024

            Probably wattle and daub – except we no longer have farm horses to provide the sh*t perhaps we will import that from our ‘friends’ abroad as well.

      6. glen cullen
        January 20, 2024

        As I said about the lords yesterday …they wont net-zero to go further and further …faster
        And two fingers to the voters and the workers

      7. Sharon
        January 20, 2024

        Agree, Ian! Nearly 3000 job losses is disgraceful!

        Plus, our electricity is being brought in from Europe via cables, at above market rates!

        If, as has been suggested, we are teetering on the brink of WW3…. how on earth are we to produce armaments to protect ourselves, or power anything if electricity is dependent on others?? Imports from potential enemies, will soon stop if war starts.

        The government and the various quangos, the blob etc are being immoral and verging on traitorous… a lot of the immigrants are from countries likely to be our enemies in a war!

        What are the government playing at? They need to get a grip!

      8. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        Can’t we buy from USA? AND probably better quality too! Saves us melting Chinese down to improve purity.

        1. glen cullen
          January 20, 2024

          You need to get with the net-zero programme – west bad east good

          1. Mickey Taking
            January 20, 2024

            xcuse, velly solly…

    3. Lifelogic
      January 20, 2024

      When indeed? Net zero rip off energy, over regulated, over taxed, wages undercut by migrants now permitted to work while living in their holels (so as to encourage even more to come). My relative, a first year doctor actually has negatve disposable income after tax, student loan interest, council tax and rent. A working migrant in a free hotel on min wage might have ÂŁ300 PW disposable. But Victoria Atkins does not think they are underpaid!

      She a lawyer has zero relevant qualification to be health Sec. but earns ÂŁ160k about 5 times that of a junior doctor!

      Info only extraced from Gov. under duress.

      1. glen cullen
        January 20, 2024

        The USA and even Germany are backtracking on net-zero and the folly of climate change ….while the UK is on full power to achieve its targets …..Germany have reopened its coal fired powered stations, maybe they’re the real leaders

        1. Mickey Taking
          January 20, 2024

          German realists not leaders.

          1. glen cullen
            January 20, 2024

            YES

    4. Ian B
      January 20, 2024

      @formula57 +1 You get to start to believe it is the whole of parliament that is rotten to the core, putting the signalling of a virtue ahead of doing their real job. I always had the feeling there where some good guys in parliament, just hidden away, that still may be true but they are all keeping their heads down that low that they have become as culpable as the guys at the top.

    5. Berkshire Alan
      January 20, 2024

      formula57
      In the meantime I see we have plans in the pipeline to reduce the Army in size again ?
      Do they really believe that the World is a safer place ?
      Soon we will not have enough people in the army to drive ambulances in an emergency, let alone defend our Country.
      Already put HMS Westminster in mothballs (shame it is not the real one) so no point in asking the Navy to help out either.
      How many actual fighting ships do we have now, is it 17 or less.
      Likewise I see we have already cut ip some of our older aircraft as well.
      A Nuclear power but cannot defend our shores from an invasion of unarmed people in rubber dinghies !
      What a fantastic message to send out to the World !

    6. Fishknife
      January 20, 2024

      Why is it so difficult to learn the lesson of “Yes Minister”?
      LDLabCon makes no difference when the advice to hot bedding Ministers has got us where we are.
      God’s Truth – we are in the foothills of World War 3 and we are ceasing Virgin Steel production.
      We deserve the Civil Service we have when we allow the Establishment to equate lack of education with stupidity.

    7. Mitchel
      January 20, 2024

      I recently came across a 2011 quote from then German Finance Minister,Wolfgang Schauble:

      “We made a mistake in the early ’60s when we decided to look for workers,not qualified workers but cheap workers from abroad,Turkey………..When we decided 50 years ago to invite workers from Turkey,we expected that their children would integrate automatically.But the problems have increased with the third generation,not diminished,therefore we have to change the policy.”

      Extraordinary!Did they actually change the policy at all?Ten years later,under Merkel,it exploded again.

    8. Hat man
      January 21, 2024

      The latest evidence of incompetent policy-making came with an incredible admission by the CEO of the Climate Change Committee. Its recommendations to Theresa May in 2019, about the feasibility of meeting the net zero target in 2050, were based on just one year’s weather data! This body has shot its credibility and needs a complete overhaul. It must not be allowed to continue to influence policy. Unfortunately Miliband’s law requires it to continue to exist, apparently.

  2. Javelin
    January 20, 2024

    The DT has an article today reporting 16,000 illegals migrants have been given jobs and accommodation. Meanwhile my taxes are going through the roof.

    This obviously has been splashed all over the marketing literature of the smuggling gangs.

    When will somebody have the courage to stand up in Parliament and tell the truth.

    “We are all strongly pro mass migration political parties.”

    1. Cheshire Girl
      January 20, 2024

      Javelin. I understand completely how you feel.

      I am 84 years old, and have to pay Income Tax at 20% on all income over ÂŁ12.500K. My bill is going to have to be paid on 31st of this month. I have never been on benefits, in my life.

      I am not saying I shouldn’t pay any tax. I expect to pay for essential things, but I do feel that older people like me, along with much younger, hard working ,people are being fleeced. We are thought of as ‘easy pickings’ to pay for all the crackpot schemes the Government thinks are necessary. There is never a break for such as us.

      1. Bingle
        January 20, 2024

        I am with you. Because I saved for, and now receive, a private pension, even my State pension is taxed.

        It is dreadful witness this Government throwing money away like confetti.

        And why are we giving Foreign Aid to India? Another joke, but not funny!

      2. A-tracy
        January 20, 2024

        Look on the bright side, at least you’ve had 24 years of pension and you were wise enough to put up for a top up pension to your state pension. The young person you’re talking about are paying 30% + 9% if they went to uni.

      3. Timaction
        January 20, 2024

        I agree with you. I spent 55 minutes yesterday waiting for the tax office to answer their phones. I submitted my self assessment in early October via our accountants and have had no written or text communication from them to confirm receipt. Finally having spoken to someone I confirmed receipt, just not processed yet. He didn’t think it an issue that I should worry about the deadline as I’m no doubt we’re the tax offices, mystic meg. No doubt along with millions of others as they’re ALL working from home, walking the dog, shopping, gardening or at the gym. A third world country and services. Paying the earth for ……………nothing apart from welfare for all!!

    2. BOF
      January 20, 2024

      Javelin
      You first have to be kicked out of the CON party before you are allowed to tell the truth! This week Andrew Bridgen made the best speech I have heard from an MP, telling the truth.

      1. Abigail
        January 20, 2024

        And YouTube has removed his debate on excess deaths! Who gave them the right to decide that they know better than our elected MPs?

    3. Michelle
      January 20, 2024

      Yet so many in power act the innocent as if they really can’t understand why the world and his Uncle have set off for these shores.
      Deterrents, I see no deterrents, just a great big welcome mat, while our own people are sidelined.
      Oh but wait, we’re being told we’ll be going to war with Russia soon. Let’s see how the tune changes from ‘stupid white boys’ to reminding us of our past, our great history, culture and the good fight for all our forefather’s handed down to us.
      Quite what we’ll all eat, what we’ll go to war in (battery powered tanks made from weak recycled steel???) and how a weakened home front will cope hasn’t been considered yet, but hey ho.
      They have no idea of the mood out there, none at all.

      1. Donna
        January 20, 2024

        I very much doubt if the despised, discriminated-against white British males will be volunteering in large numbers for the “woke” Establishment’s future wars, like they did in 1914 and 1939. Why fight for a country where “the elite” makes it so clear they despise you.

        If they think the army of immigrant males they’ve imported are going to do it instead, they’re even more deluded than I already think they are.

        1. Timaction
          January 20, 2024

          Exactly. 10 million imported in the last 20 years aren’t going to volunteer to die for this Country. They will be off back to their homelands whilst the legacy parties will expect white English males to give the ultimate sacrifice whilst not being allowed to join the RAF, Aviva, the Police etc. I think the Tory’s EDI, ESG non equality laws and Sex Laws to promote LGBT XYZ will bite them in the ass! Not before time.

      2. BOF
        January 20, 2024

        ‘we’ll be going to war with Russia soon.’

        So that is the purpose of the recently imported standing army of men of fighting age. I suggest they are sent to the front line in Ukraine to gain experience.

        1. Hat man
          January 20, 2024

          In a few years we might be involved in conflicts with any or all of Russia, China, Iran or N. Korea, according to defence Minister Grant Shapps. Quite how he thinks will do that this is beyond me. This at a time when we will be the only G 20 country incapable of manufacturing steel for our armaments, and our army is reportedly set to shrink by a third.

          Even Ben Wallace talked a lot more more sense then the present incumbent.

    4. Lifelogic
      January 20, 2024

      Indeed . Many working have zero disposable income after tax,NI, student loan int. rent but migrants in hotels may have ÂŁ300pw disposable.

      1. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        My sister in Devon walks to buy a newpaper daily and finds the illegals camped in the newsagents all buying lottery tickets with their daily spend….

        1. Lifelogic
          January 21, 2024

          The migrants buying lottery tickets are not very bright then!

    5. MPC
      January 20, 2024

      It’s been known for some time that asylum seekers can work in care homes once they’ve been here one year. Now it seems the government has broadened this scheme to further incentivise illegal immigration.

      What with the entirely predictable closure of Port Talbot steelworks (nothing whatsoever about that in today’s Guardian, incidentally), I again recommend widespread adoption of my ‘expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed’ maxim as a means of staying sane.

    6. Berkshire Alan
      January 20, 2024

      Javelin
      Yes utter madness isn’t it.
      I wonder if they will be taxed on the benefit in kind for accommodation and food ?
      Probably not.
      The law of unintended consequences, or just complete and utter incompetence.
      Once again not a clue about Human Nature in this policy.
      Meanwhile I am going to be taxed on my State pension to help pay for this.

    7. Ian B
      January 20, 2024

      @Javelin – So arriving illegally meaning becoming a criminal – rewards you.

      At the same time parliament is discussing punishing homeless indigenous people with fines up to ÂŁ2500 and prison

      1. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        I imagine the homeless might vote for ‘all found’ prison, they can’t pay any fines!

  3. Mike Wilson
    January 20, 2024

    Yeah, all sounds good. After 14 years in power it all sounds like ‘blah, blah’ to me.

    I’m curious to know what the relationship is between a department minister and the senior civil servants. In terms of the organisation, is a minister their ‘boss’. If a Minister of State tells his department ‘I want this done’ – and the senior civil servants basically ignore the order- can the Minister say ‘you’re fired’?

    Because it strikes me that regardless of the noises made by government – bonfire of QUANGOs, immigration in the tens of thousands etc. – nothing ever actually happens.

    1. Squid
      January 20, 2024

      Conservative Ministers like to brief their friends in the press that civil servants are to blame for the failure of their policies. Always remember civil servants aren’t allowed to answer back. The problem here is Conservative policies, not civil servants

      1. agricola
        January 20, 2024

        SQUID
        You need a lesson in recent history. When in the EU the civil service was in total control, politicians decided little beyond their constituencies. A major problem is that the CS do answer back because they cannot accept that power is now back in the hands of politicians. I have a degree of sympathy when you look at the performance of our current politicians.
        You would be more palatable as Calamari Romana.

        1. Mickey Taking
          January 20, 2024

          No wonder Dom Cummings wanted to take a wrecking ball to the CS managers.

        2. hefner
          January 20, 2024

          A lesson in recent history? Well I guess you could go with:
          ‘How Westminster works’, I.Dunt, 2023 with chapters on ‘ the vote, Members of Parliament, The Power (aka the PM), the Ministers, the Treasury, the Civil Service, the Press, the Commons, the Law, the Lords’.
          It offers really interesting insights on each of these categories plus (as if not more) important how they interact with each other.
          And clearly the present mess has very little to do with WEF, WHO or other globalist organisations. The Brits are well capable to create such a mess all by themselves.

          1. Mickey Taking
            January 20, 2024

            Brits? I think you mean the Tories and their establishment friends?

    2. Hope
      January 20, 2024

      I think it is clear Tories blaming anyone for failures rather than take responsibility for their betrayal of the nation and pure stupidity. JR,m like the rest are making excuses in blaming others ie civil service, BOE et etc. it is his party and govt to blame.

      Reply I am not seeking any such thing. I provide analysis of why we are where we are to try to improve or fix it. You need to know why some things have gone wrong to try to fix them. Many of the things that are wrong like too much illegal migration are not wanted by Ministers.

      1. The Prangwizard
        January 20, 2024

        Reply to reply.

        Yesterday the illegal figures were insignificant compared to legal immigration. Sir John likes to like them. One day he says tens of thousands are to be welcomed. Another day he says no they are not

        Reply Do read what I say. Our government allowed people in so of course we welcome them. We rely on them for the jobs they do. I also at the same time say we are letting in far too many and propose better ways of getting the jobs filled. What can’t you understand? Why do you attack me whatever I say or do? Maybe I should just delete your deliberate misconstructions of my views.

        1. Mickey Taking
          January 20, 2024

          but you and the officials have no idea whatsoever what skills they have to integrate into our economy and its dire need. Vague platitudes simply won’t wash.

        2. worra laff
          January 20, 2024

          Handbags at Dawn.
          ooh err.

        3. Sir Joe Soap
          January 20, 2024

          “Our government allowed people in so of course we welcome them”
          The point is our government made a promise to us NOT to welcome in these numbers, and now does. Please don’t lay the blame at your contributors ‘ doors when it is clearly the government -of which you remain a signed up party member and MP-who wants this both ways. We purportedly voted NOT to welcome them and you effectively disobeyed us by doing so.

      2. Margaret
        January 20, 2024

        Yet another boatful have been granted the right to work in the UK.

  4. Everhopeful
    January 20, 2024

    I am really stupid.
    It never occurred to me that the govt. recruited people IN ADDITION to all the those who already make their way here.

    1. Bloke
      January 20, 2024

      People should not be allowed to stay permanently just because they did a job here. Would you tolerate having scaffolding left on your house or a giant crane in your garden just because a roof tile needed replacing ten years ago?

      1. Everhopeful
        January 20, 2024

        +++
        Certainly not!
        Agree
it is ludicrous to spend all this dosh, lose political credibility and all to avoid dragooning the out of work into jobs.
        Assuming that is the reason behind it all.
        The international lockstep nature of it all makes me sometimes favour the Kalergi Plan interpretation

        Wonder why govt. is warmongering yet we are no longer capable of steel production?

        1. Donna
          January 21, 2024

          As the Lab-created Covid just demonstrated, they expect the next war will be biological. Funnily enough, there are quite a few US-funded bio-labs in Ukraine as well as Wuhan.

          Reply The dispute over covid origins is between it originating in another species and then crossing the species barrier, or a Chinese lab.

  5. Everhopeful
    January 20, 2024

    Surely it was far more ( if one believes such rot) “carbon efficient” to bring goods in bulk to a main centre ( a town) and distribute by means of direct selling ( shops).
    Rather than hoiking in folk from all over the world plus their families?
    Small and neat has to be less carbon producing
    A town served a fairly defined area and when people
even the sinners in their cars
came to shop they tended to buy all their weekly needs in one go.
    Remember the bliss of the local town centre on a Saturday morning?
    All destroyed for you by those who have cotton wool clouds between their ears rather than brains!

    1. Everhopeful
      January 20, 2024

      And two towns in the area where I grew up had defunct railway goods stations.
      You could at that time still see the rails etc. All built over now I daresay.
      But what a great boon such a delivery system must have been.

      AND it hasn’t escaped my suspicion that the plandemic was viciously used to end for good the civilised way of delivery. A knock at the door, a few polite words, goods handed over and a cheery goodbye. Homogenising customs ripped away for disgusting expediencyn.

    2. Peter
      January 20, 2024

      Everhopeful,

      I remember when most of the shops were a stone’s throw from the family house and it was not even in the town centre. It was a parade of shops before you got the High Street.

      Greengrocer on the corner, post office/newsagent, grocer, wet fish shop, two bakers, butcher, toy shop, bicycle shop, menswear shop, sports shop, plus pub and off licence and a church. Department stores were in the High Street. Supermarkets had yet to take off. Woolworths and the Coop provided Saturday jobs for my brother and I. Marks and Spencer and Boots provided Saturday jobs for my sisters.

      Housewives stayed at home and shopped on a daily basis. A milkman came round every day.

      1. Everhopeful
        January 20, 2024

        +++
        Yes.
        I remember that too.
        And several shops including a butcher in every village.
        Its was all so lovely.

        1. hefner
          January 20, 2024

          And ‘old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mist of autumn mornings’ (G.Orwell)

          1. Everhopeful
            January 20, 2024

            “ 
these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene.”
            Orwell

            I miss my country.

          2. Mickey Taking
            January 20, 2024

            and the frozen privy in the yard or garden. Oh Joy!

      2. Michelle
        January 20, 2024

        People knew each other as well. There were often generations of knowledge of each other too. I know times have changed and people move areas etc. but the societal collapse as it is need not have been a given to go with that.
        Progressives didn’t like this (although they always wax lyrical about other cultures who keep to such ways) and encouraged everyone to adopt the ‘do as you please’ while the state runs your family life. As a young woman in the early 1980’s it seemed very frowned upon to believe you had a duty and a stake in taking care of elderly family or neighbours, as these were things that had enslaved women for centuries..etc.

        Well I blame this atomising of society, the break down in taking care of your own and then those close by, with everyone believing ‘they’ (there’s always a ‘they’ that being the state machinery) are responsible, for the fact a small child starved to death by the side of his dead father.

        1. Everhopeful
          January 20, 2024

          Agree 100%
          The last thing they wanted was social cohesion which by our youth they had managed to semi destroy by two pointless world wars.
          Everything dreadful that we have now was sold to the gullible with the word FREEDOM. Typical commie tactics I believe.
          Freedom to leave your home and go to “study” for a worthless degree. Rarely to return and play a part in local matters.
          Freedom for women to work for a boss rather than for their families by the by destroying a man’s ability to earn enough to keep a family.
          We are now all divided and set at odds with each other.
          We were sold a crock of sh*t!

        2. Peter
          January 20, 2024

          I think John Major also said something about ‘warm beer’ and ‘bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.

          In 1943 Eamonn de Valera said:-
          ‘ The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age’

          Sadly and unexpectedly, that has been ruined by Mr. Verucca the current leader – a man who was promoted as one of Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders. The French Prime Minister is another WEF Young Global Leader.

      3. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone’ Big Yellow Taxi ….Joni Mitchell. 1969

    3. Original Richard
      January 20, 2024

      Everhopeful, Peter and Michelle :

      You’ll be pleased to learn that your idyllic lifestyle will be returning thanks to the Net Zero Strategy as a result of the imposition of C40/15 minute cities. There won’t be any of the old type of shop though, only banks, like food banks where you go for your daily rations. You won’t be allowed to have a car and anyway there will be no need to travel anywhere so I would recommend the elderly and infirm to obtain a residence within wheelchair distance of their local hospital.

      And those with dementia will wonder why they’ve been transported to a foreign country.

      1. Everhopeful
        January 20, 2024

        We are all no doubt fully aware of the 15 minute cities which are being pushed on us by the second.
        It will be like being back in the 18th century but without the means or knowledge to survive.
        Locally I get the feeling that the dreadful types who made a play for power during the plandemic are at it again. Now they are trying to interfere in health matters that are none of their business. During the plague they actually herded folk ( their followers) to get the jab.
        We will be penned in a tiny area harangued and ordered by politically correct councillors doing the bidding of another facet of the Uniparty
        Not a lot to look forward to.
        So I, at least, tend to look back.

      2. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        I look around me, travel by bus or train, listen to voices, study the clothes, and KNOW i’m in another country.

        1. Everhopeful
          January 20, 2024

          SNAP!

        2. glen cullen
          January 20, 2024

          Snap here too

  6. Everhopeful
    January 20, 2024

    I was wondering how to put this.
    Then it occurred to me.
    Of course, successive govts have ( in their infinite wisdom) done away with the working class.
    We don’t have one any more.
    There is no one willing to become an honest plumber or bricklayer.
    They all want to be footballers and are pretty cross when they can’t be.

    Yesterday a couple of lads came round trying to sell the broadband that took forever to be installed in the road. I only know that from their leaflet. I don’t speak estuary jafakan.
    If we want a workforce here kids need to be taught properly.
    And they need proper teachers.

  7. Lifelogic
    January 20, 2024

    Exactly you just undercut other peoplea wages this decrease the tax take (so tax rates have to increase even further) and creates extra demand for healthcare, schools, roads, housing, police, social services
pushing taxes and government borrowing up again.

    Prof. Dame Jenny Harris was asked on BBC Today Programme the other day about what was causing vaccine hesitancy and the recent measles outbreaks. Perhaps I can help her it was mainly the idiotic roll out (by government medical “experts”) of new tech, hugh net harm, Covid Vaccines even to the young and people who had already had Covid is the main reason for the lack of confidence now in other net good, safe and effective vaccines. Excess death still hugely up when they should be below normal post Covid.

    1. Lifelogic
      January 20, 2024

      Needless to say the BBC did not question Dame Jenny on this very obvious point, she went on about different uptakes in Muslim communities instead. The Covid Vaccine pushing “experts” or should this be criminals(?) have done huge harm to confidence in all vaccines.

      1. Hope
        January 20, 2024

        LL,
        Another useless fool above her pay grade.

        1. David+L
          January 20, 2024

          Dame Jenny may have started off with good intentions. There is footage from early in the plandemic showing her explaining to Boris Johnson, correctly, why face masks are inappropriate for an airborne virus. Then a sudden change happened for reasons we can only surmise and she then joined in the chorus of “be very afraid” that became the mantra under which we all suffered.

          Talking of changes, I attended an excellent presentation on Pre Diabetes at Wokingham Medical Centre this week. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Doctors recommend that because statins increase blood sugar, consideration be given to stop taking them “provided you haven’t had a heart attack or stroke.” The incessant propaganda that insists all over 50’s should have this stuff in their bodies needs to be moderated by the Medical & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. But, since their main funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry, I guess it won’t happen anytime soon.

          1. Mickey Taking
            January 20, 2024

            Wow! there were people there, and they let you in?

  8. DOM
    January 20, 2024

    Diversity obsessed Whitehall has an agenda and that agenda isn’t related to the supply of cheap labour. Even the south coast arrivals are now given permission to work.

    Those who run the British state actually despise Britain. Don’t expect the racist, Anglophobic Labour party to change that for it was them who created it and don’t expect the Tory party to break it apart either. The Tories are to busy carving out their careers to be bothered with countering the progressive activists intent on creating a new Britain with a very different atmosphere

    1. Michelle
      January 20, 2024

      How can we come to any other conclusion given all that has been done.
      Labour in my view has always been a very anti-English party and the whole of Westminster has followed suit.

      I represent my late Brother, in a group of former military personnel. Let me assure Westminster, that while they are sabre rattling with Russia, there is a huge ex-military presence out there that have other ideas as to who is stomping all over the nation they were once proud and glad to serve. I’m not talking about just old boys whose skills wouldn’t be required either. We would require them though, given the state of our forces, and the now atomised society of variable cultures to keep under control. Blair required them while he was interfering everywhere. My Husband was on reserve during the war in former Yugoslavia, and he was sent quite a few begging letters as his former skills were needed to help train people. He’d been on reserve for quite a few years by then, so they must have been desperate. What a way to run an army!!! It typifies how everything is run now, on a shoe string and with little thought to the future.
      I don’t think in my life time I’ve ever known such anger in the country, even from people not usually political and even some very fluffy liberal types I know of are sounding more Enoch Powell these days!!!

    2. Hope
      January 20, 2024

      Dom,
      It has gone beyond reasonable doubt the Tory party are trying to rid us of our nation state, culture, religion and way of life by mass immigration and oppressing the population into coercive silence by equality rot, anything but. Giving away N.Ireland is the glaring example.

      Labour are not worse, just the same but better at the economy and less tax.

      1. IanT
        January 20, 2024

        “Labour are not worse, just the same but better at the economy and less tax”

        Just because we have a useless (so called Tory) Government at the moment Hope, doesn’t mean that the alternative is going to be any better. My God “better at the economy and less tax” – how gullible can you be? Fog-horn Reeves isn’t going to control Labour’s spending for one second once they get into power.

        Of course they aren’t really “labour” (any more than the Tories are “conservatives”). I haven’t heard a peep from Starmer about the disgraceful Port Talbot loss of steel production and those 3,000 skilled jobs. All in the name of the great god Net Zero! Going to find 3,000 new ‘green’ jobs in Port Talbot Sir Keir? No, I don’t think so.
        What a load of second hand shysters most of these people are!

        1. Hope
          January 20, 2024

          Tory record on tax worse than any govt since last WWII. Same for debt, debt interest.

          1. IanT
            January 21, 2024

            We effectively had a wartime economy during Covid Hope. Whether we needed to do so or not is a matter for debate but I recall that Labour wanted more lock-down, not less. However, I have heard absolutely nothing from Labour about what they will actaully do in Government – at least nothing of substance. Their mantra of “This Government is terrible but we will will do better” is a half truth.
            Yes, the current Government hasn’t won my support but I can see no reason why Labour would do any better and many why it would not. Not the least of these, is the fact it is hock to the Unions and still has strong EU leanings. It will also continue the economic sucide of Net Zero and look for more ways to undermine our National identity. Personally, I would like the Tory Party purged of it’s ‘Lib Dem’ wing but that is clearly not what is happening. However, given a choice between Sunak or Starmer, there is no choice I’m afraid, it’s Sunak every time.

      2. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        At least we’ll all get benefits under them, not just the idle percentage.

    3. The Prangwizard
      January 20, 2024

      The population of England for many hundreds of years improved itself by by itself. Now our leaderships think we must import people in their hundreds of thousands, millions even.

      The consequence is it destroying us, culturally and economically and we all know crime is being imported, and often with religious fanaticism. This of course dare not be challenged, and in parallel our history and beliefs are not defended.

      Sir John thinks making a few changes after the imports have taken place is the answer. Otherwise dodging the big problem.

      Our society and history is being destroyed by our leaders and the other elites who can live safe lives behind walls.

  9. Abigail
    January 20, 2024

    British citizenship should never be granted to immigrants until their family has been here for three generations. The assumption should be that once their native land becomes safe again, they go back home. We haven’t got room for all these people – and some of them breed exponentially. The rally in London last Saturday was terrifying!

  10. Philip P.
    January 20, 2024

    It’s interesting to look at the government’s list of shortage occupations. They include some rather puzzling ones such as health service managers, which I would have thought was an occupation not suffering from a serious manpower shortage. In some cases there’s a very clear link between bad policy-making and the current lack of people. I notice one is ‘musicians’. Well, squeeze music out of the school curriculum and activities, and you end up with a lack of orchestral musicians – who’d have thought it. ‘Jobs in the fishing industry’ is another shortage area. With the endless reductions in this country’s fishing quotas agreed by successive governments, no surprise if British people aren’t keen to go into fishing. ‘Mechanical engineering’, ‘welding’ etc…. areas where we should have kept tech colleges teaching vocational skills, rather than expanding 6th form colleges. Bad situations follow from bad decisions.

  11. Michelle
    January 20, 2024

    All of the points made in the article regarding importing labour were made over and over again, years ago.
    These were only the ideas of ‘racists’ ‘far right’ , well you get the picture.
    I can point to endless examples of how it seemed very much geared to have a welfare benefit society, and a pool of cheap labour for big business.
    Shortage of courses for those wishing to study medicine, at a time the population was growing rapidly, so more strain on health resources.
    Even some who’d qualified yet months down the line, were still waiting to be rubber stamped into a position in midwifery, (endless red tape) while we were screaming shortages!!
    People laid off, so that one E.European could be brought in to do the job it would normally take a couple of people to do, with due diligence.
    That’s just a small example, the page could be filled a hundred times over.
    It was and is as plain as the nose on your face as to what has been going on.

  12. agricola
    January 20, 2024

    Your last sentence suggests that the civil service are a power with more control than the minister. Accspting that this is accurate information it reinforces my previous expressed contention that the CS contract of employment is in dire need of being rewritten.

    That we do not train sufficient of our own is a fact when you look at medical places available for the ex school well qualified. It may well apply to most other professionals we are short of. Universities should be directed to prioritise UK students. When we import skills it should be on time expiring visas, varying from six months for agricultural workers to five years for nurses and ten for doctors. Citizenship should be a prize offered to some at the end of their visa. Finally we need to look critically at the congenitally unemployed with a view to getting most back into work, shaping pegs to fit holes where necessary and removing benefits as a lifestyle choice.

    If it is, as I suspect, the cost of energy and nett zero that is about to destroy 2800 jobs and the lives of tens of thousands of direct and indirect people in South Wales then the playing field must be changed rapidly. I am told on good authority that our home grown energy is very expensive because the EU did not want a booming economy off its shores and our cringing politicians and civil service leapt at the chance to comply. The energy business model must change drastically and urgently. Nett Zero must end its evangelical path and where practical be replaced by engineering and science. Politicians of all stripes have more to answer for than fujitsu and the post office when their management of the UK is judged over their last fifty years performance.

  13. Dave Andrews
    January 20, 2024

    The intake of people this year to plug the low skill, low pay job shortage will go on to get better jobs very soon. So we still have the low skill job shortage and have to have a fresh intake of people next year.
    Why else has there been hundreds of thousands net immigration into this country over more than a decade, yet the low skill job shortage remains?

  14. Donna
    January 20, 2024

    The Daily Telegraph, following a Freedom of Information request, is reporting today that the Treacherous Tories have given criminal migrants the right to work in Construction, Farming and Care in the UK whilst their applications are pending.

    They’re paid 20% less than Brits but continue to get many of the “benefits” showered on criminal migrants, including heavily subsidised asylum accommodation. In the “away with the fairies” world of the Government this supposedly doesn’t give an incentive to other potential criminal migrants to force their way into the country illegally.

    The icing on the cake of this lunatic policy is that it is the application of an EU law ….. the EU we’re supposed to have left! And the Not-a-Conservative-Party wonders why it is about to be obliterated by a furious electorate.

    No wonder we’re told Brits “don’t want to work in these industries” when their potential employers can undercut the minimum wage by 20% and hire a criminal migrant instead!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/19/channel-migrants-given-right-to-work/

    1. Ian B
      January 20, 2024

      @Donna
      And the UK people are on the exclusion list by force of the State indoctrination of Discrimination Departments

      1. Hope
        January 20, 2024

        Donna,
        And no wonder they can afford and try to go home at Christmas as we read in daily press about Luton Airport!! The Tories did not want them to go home!!! Which in itself proves they are illegal economic migrants.

  15. Michelle
    January 20, 2024

    I would like to thank Sir John for allowing us to vent our anger on this subject.
    He must know he’s on to a hiding to nothing.
    So many MP’s, my own in particular, will not enter into any discussion at all on this subject.
    It is very frustrating to try and put your view calmly to someone supposed to represent you, only to receive a one line reply of the usual ‘talent’ ‘diversity’.

    1. Mickey Taking
      January 20, 2024

      ‘a hiding to nothing’ – or the act of drowning men hoping to appeal to the one in the boat with a lifebelt to throw!

  16. Rod Evans
    January 20, 2024

    What a bizarre concept you have advanced here Sir John? Do you truly imagine the increase in UK population due entirely to uncontrolled immigration is caused by employers looking for staff?
    Either you are naĂŻve (which I doubt) or you think we are! stop peddling such nonsense.

    1. mancunius
      January 20, 2024

      Rod, you sound rather remote from real life. Presumably you never meet with those who provide services in cafés, delivery, building works or agriculture? Nor do you seem to have much idea of how large those sectors are?
      The exponential increase in the population due to migration is indeed preponderantly the result of employers looking for inexpensive blue-collar staff. That such a large number of Conservative politicians are keen to ignore the issue is down to their their dependence on donations from lobbying industries who make their ‘needs’ clear..

      1. hat man
        January 20, 2024

        +1

      2. Rod Evans
        January 21, 2024

        Apologies for being so late in replying, I find the waiting for moderation thing so frustrating, plus it takes away the immediacy of the exchanges we may otherwise have.
        I can assure you, I am very familiar with real life and the multicultural make up of all working class activities here in the UK. That is not the issue. The issue is, an increasing population is being forced on us by open border policies. That increase in population is not helpful and it most certainly is not due to employers looking for notionally scarce workers.

    2. The Prangwizard
      January 20, 2024

      I’ll say it – our views do not change his views. He ignores us just as much as the rest.

      1. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        wise up Sir! You should know by now Politicians know best.

  17. Sakara Gold
    January 20, 2024

    Unfortunately, the highly skilled Polish/Bulgarian/Hungarian etc tradespeople – plumbers, electricians, decorators, carpenters, bricklayers, domestic cleaners etc left us in disgust after Brexit. Along with the French research chemists, German finance specialists, Dutch agricultural experts, Belgian diamond cutters etc etc

    Apparently, thanks to the availability of these sources of cheap highly skilled EU labour, we have neglected to train up the necessary indigenous agriculture specialists, construction apprentices, engineering graduates or indeed Welsh steel workers – which takes several years.

    The government has apparently chosen to replace these people with unskilled migrants from Africa, south east Asia, Hong Kong etc – who will be a drain on our resources for decades. The obvious disadvantages of building our economy on the availability of cheap foreign labour are now apparent.

    1. Donna
      January 20, 2024

      No, most of them didn’t leave. In 2023, 7.5 million EU citizens had applied for settled status in the UK, post-Brexit.
      https://the3million.org.uk/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics#:~:text=How%20many%20EU%20citizens%20are,applications%20from%20the%20same%20person.

    2. IanT
      January 20, 2024

      I’ve known an extended Polish Family for well over 20 years SG. They came here when our average wage was six times that of Poland. At that time even highly skilled men came here to do manual labour in order to send money home. Thankfully, things have now very much improved and these differentials have largely disappeared. One of the brothers has taken his family home, having made enough money (here in UK) to buy his house there. The other brother has grown up children living & working here and they have all decided to stay. From conversations with them, Brexit hasn’t been a major part of this, they all had the right to stay. It’s been driven by improved financial circumstances and ageing parents (who stayed in Poland) .

  18. Kenneth
    January 20, 2024

    None of this will be solved while you have socialists parked int he Conservative Party.

    Sunak and Hunt and the other wets need to booted out of the Conservative Party so it can reform in time for the election after next.

  19. Nigl
    January 20, 2024

    So how is giving channel illegals permission to stay, jobs and accommodation, a deterrent.

    It isn’t that is why they are pouring in. Your government is truly mad and lying through its teeth.

    And as we think Rwanda, the new years honours are fresh in the memories.

    Let’s think about David, now Sir David Davis, 19th April 2022 he (to paraphrase) said using post Brexit power to send people to Rwanda was disgraceful.

    29th Dec he voted for Sunak and crowed about it the Daily Mail.

    I wonder what changed his mind. Nothing to do with getting a knighthood in the NY’s honours I presume?

    What’s that smell?

    1. Mickey Taking
      January 20, 2024

      when something looks rotten, sounds rotten, it usually IS.

  20. glen cullen
    January 20, 2024

    Off Topic – Is anyone else feed-up with the met-office naming storms/weather every week

    There isn’t and has never been a labour shortage in the UK ….there are sector lobby groups wanting to import cheap foreign labour by lying about sector shortages ….oh no there aren’t any curry cooks in manchester, best allow a couple of thousand in ! pathetic

    1. Mickey Taking
      January 20, 2024

      The Met Office doesn’t name them all, but they like all weather organisations use the chosen name.

  21. Iain gill
    January 20, 2024

    I see that the telegraph is reporting that channel migrants have quietly been given the right to work, while simultaneously keeping their state funded accommodation and meals.
    Really absolutely disgraceful.

    1. glen cullen
      January 20, 2024

      They should admit there own folly and scrap the visa requirement all together ….you’re here to stay

    2. Bill B.
      January 20, 2024

      Illegal but allowed to work. In any other country there would be outrage.

      They are encouraged to migrate, escorted in by our Channel taxi service. I wonder who is employing them, Let me guess, the Home Office don’t keep records.

      1. glen cullen
        January 20, 2024

        Correct – what of the rule of law, what of the thousands who legally wait months for a visa, what of the honest, innocent, decent law abiding people ……the economic criminals get to leap frog to the front, no questions

        1. iain gill
          January 20, 2024

          I have now come to the conclusion that those in the ruling class doing this are actively blowing a raspberry to the British people. Who exactly are the Conservatives expecting to vote for them, anyone in number 10 delusional to think they have a chance? Its a caretaker government, being ignored by the Mr Humpry’s, and regarded as a laughing stock by the voters.

    3. Mickey Taking
      January 20, 2024

      I didn’t know we had a need for chain-gang operatives!

  22. graham1946
    January 20, 2024

    ‘Business’ should pay the right wages to live in this country. It is shameful that a full time worker should have to rely on benefits provided by the tax payer to make ends meet. Maybe if the pay was better than the dole we would not have so many financially inactive. If ‘Business’ cannot pay the wages, they should not be in business. By the look of the profits made by ‘big business’ they can well afford it and the stock exchange keeps rising so it seems there is plenty of profit in those firms listed there and on AIM. If the smaller firms weren’t clobbered by the government they would be able to afford to pay as well. So as usual, at the bottom of the problems is the government.

  23. Atlas
    January 20, 2024

    Too true Sir John. It is a shame that the Conservative Party is now run by the ‘one nation’ faction. You may ask ‘which nation’? It is the EU…

  24. Michael Saxton
    January 20, 2024

    The list of occupations created by government allowing foreign workers into our country is ridiculous. The government through education and those on benefits should be encouraging our own people to do this work. Meanwhile yesterday’s outrageous decision to sacrifice Port Talbot on the high altar of Net Zero is unacceptable. This decision will destroy Port Talbot and adversely impact thousands of families beyond the Steel works. And for what? To import pure steel from India and or China thus increasing global emissions. What a stupid damaging decision by Sunak and his hapless government. Tata of course couldn’t care less they’ve received a huge tax payers grant to wreck Port Talbot. Scandalous Sir John.

  25. Ian B
    January 20, 2024

    We have a Conservative Government ‘hell-bent’ on undermining the UK Citizen. Why are those that are entering the UK Illegally therefore becoming criminals being forced on our care, construction and farming outlets.
    There are numerous things wrong with this first and foremost it undermines our existing needs to grow employment by creating better conditions and pay in all jobs.
    Then there is the reward for being a criminal under UK Law, thus encourage more and more to come and join in.
    This is lazy government, a warped parliament to discriminate its own population in this manner.

  26. Ian B
    January 20, 2024

    So, the UK no longer has the ability to enable people to learn, to facilitate people to realise their full potential.

    Why do we have schools? Oh.. I forgot they are the home of indoctrination not of learning. Why is the next jump up called ‘higher education/learning’ when it is about discrimination inclusion and equalities (DIE) – not about reaching potential.

    We have a Conservative Government that will not stand up, will not listen or hear the people, but will denigrate it at every chance.

    1. glen cullen
      January 20, 2024

      Last year I did a term lecturing at a university, on the first day I was given an ID pass with a rainbow coloured lanyard, I took the lanyard off as I wanted to clip the pass to my shirt pocket 
.to be told it was against policy and the security wouldn’t allow me access and would report me if seen without it
      I suggest to the department head that the important function of my pass was the ID card itself, to be told ‘no’ the important part was to engage and to be seen engaging with diversity 
.I was glad my tenure was only for one term

      1. Mickey Taking
        January 20, 2024

        did he/she mean kowtow/promote to diversity rather than engage?

        1. glen cullen
          January 20, 2024

          kowtow

  27. Bert+Young
    January 20, 2024

    It is nonsense to allow Temporary Workers in to fill ” gaps “; there are and have been for some time too many unemployed “Brits “. Our system of employment has been exploited for years ; we have not maintained a discipline to keep eligible individuals at work when they could and should have been employed ; we have been “soft Soapers “. Allowing working from home is another stupid feature – would Temporary Workers be allowed to do the same ?. We have been ” going down hill ” for years due to poor and ineffectve Government control and legislation ; we do not need 650 MPs and a House of Lords . A drastic overhaul is required ; manufacturing must be given a priority and national pride restored .

  28. Ian B
    January 20, 2024

    What Government and this Conservative Government in particular must get in to their thick skulls they are useless, especially useless when it comes to running things directly or them interfering with how the nearly 70 million individuals that inhabit these islands get on with their own individual lives.

    That’s the point ‘individuals’, all of which when left alone from outside pressure (as that is what it is) manage just fine. Instead, what we get is a Conservative Government so hung up on signalling a virtue especially to one tiny collective group or another, that they then punish the other 99.9% that could fix-it.

    We have a parliament that is so wound up with individuals(that word again) looking to promote their own personal esteem they have forgotten why they are there and the promises to they made to get there

  29. Paula
    January 20, 2024

    Just estimates but 400 thousand people leave each year. The vast majority of them will have to be qualified in some way to do so as few countries take just anybody.

    The million or so coming in ? We haven’t a clue what they’re bringing to the country. We don’t check and don’t really demand any standards.

  30. Ian B
    January 20, 2024

    Tata Steel has just announced 3,000 redundancies, all paid for by the taxpayer. More people without work.
    This Conservative Government has awarded Tata £500 million of taxpayer money to change to smelting re-cycled steel for which there is a world glut and is valued at ‘pennies’ on the open market (can they compete)
    At the same time this Conservative Government has given credence to their desire to export UK jobs, by now having to import from the Worlds Largest polluters all the specialist steel we desperately need in the UK. Losing all the high-grade experience and training that has built up over the years. They have not just been made redundant their skills have been made redundant – and for what!
    Everything being done is to remove support for the UK and destroy their NetZero credentials and honesty

    1. Original Richard
      January 20, 2024

      Ian B :

      “Losing all the high-grade experience and training that has built up over the years. They have not just been made redundant their skills have been made redundant – and for what!”

      China and India bought our steel works simply to obtain our steel making knowledge. There was never any intention in keeping our steelworks going when they can undercut us using coal.

      Our current Parliamentary parties and a majority of MPs are determined to reduce us to a third world state, no doubt, in the name of Equity, with massive immigration giving us the Diversity we are expected to enjoy. Inclusion means authoritarian rule with no freedom of speech as otherwise someone will feel they are not included.

    2. Mickey Taking
      January 20, 2024

      We should be adopting a new mantra ‘ Ta Ta anything Indian.’

  31. Original Richard
    January 20, 2024

    Unfortunately a majority of our current Parliamentary MPs and all Parliamentary parties have expended so much political capital on the benefits of massive immigration and multiculturalism that they must continue down this path to avoid losing face until the country’s institutions and economy collapses from the sheer weight of numbers and balkanisation starts.

    The same is true for the Net Zero Strategy where our existing political parties have expended so much political capital on CAGW and Net Zero they are simply unable to make a U-turn no matter how desperately bad becomes our economy and living standards. In fact for many, curbing CO2 is simply the vehicle for the real goal which is the reduction of living standards.

  32. Paula
    January 20, 2024

    If mass immigration really were the solution then why is every single thing you look at in crisis – from housing to healthcare ?

    We should have the best housing and healthcare by now. Instead everything gets worse.

  33. Pauline
    January 20, 2024

    Quite agree John.

  34. glen cullen
    January 20, 2024

    At least its quite satisfying knowing that the Unite Union and the Labour Party have the Tata Steel workers backs 
they’ll give up the net-zero nonsense and fight for the workers jobs and workers rights 
expect full cross-sector industrial strikes any day now

    1. glen cullen
      January 20, 2024

      Sorry I forgot that our Unions and the Labour Party are also fully paid up members of net-zero and the lunacy of reducing co2 at any cost

  35. Lynn Atkinson
    January 20, 2024

    Mercedes-Benz sells all 80 German car dealerships of the concern, including the headquarters in Stuttgart. One of the symbols of Germany, Mercedes-Benz, is leaving the country.

    Mercedes-Benz workshops from Germany are also leaving.

    Deindustrialization.

    1. forthurst
      January 20, 2024

      Mercedes-Benz has 12 manufacturing plants in Germany. They intend to move out of customer facing activities in Germany.

  36. Alan Paul Joyce
    January 20, 2024

    Dear Mr. Redwood,

    On the beaches of France a reporter asked a ‘desperate’ migrant about to board a small boat, “How long have you been in France”?

    “Seven years in France, five years in prison” the UK-bound migrant replied.

    Wonderful. Just wonderful.

  37. agricola
    January 20, 2024

    Todays subject is just one element in a failing and guideless United Kingdom. We need a new plan A to replace the rudderless and decaying country we have become. In no particular order we need.

    A totally new enterprise culture supported by a simplyfied and much less onerrous tax regime.

    The removal of all residual EU legal impediments. No negotiation, just do it.

    The re-writing of the civil service contract. They are currently in a place they were never designed to be in a parliamentary democracy, having supped at the EU table.

    While retaining the general direction of nett zero, let it be led by engineering, science, and the market place. Government has to take the people with it.

    Maximise the use of our own energy sources of coal, gas, and oil to bridge the gap between now and when atomic energy can become our major base load of energy. Rewright the business plan such that, as in the USA, users domestic and industrial get it at vastly reduced cost.

    Rethink the legal and communication connect between customers, us as individuals, and large organisations be they private or governmental, such that we can get intelligent responses after three rings of the phone.

    Rewrite banks a charter of obligation to their customers such that nobody is denied an account.

    Consider via referendum the need for proportional representation in electing Parliament.

    Understand that telling us how to behave in respect of race or colour is unacceptable. We know possibly better than any nation on earth. To enhance integration make no exceptions to accepted English norms in any of our institutions.

    Rethink the policing and polics force of the UK because it is only good in parts while failing the majority of our citizens.

    I must now create a chicken tagine so content yourselves with the above, designed to make the UK great once more.

  38. glen cullen
    January 20, 2024

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron and Trade Minister Lord Johnson in attendance at UN WEF Davos 
..when can we expect further instructions

  39. Diane
    January 20, 2024

    As we keep getting told, ‘the plan’ including Rwanda, is working, obviously the one which we don’t know the extent of. Working “quietly” it seems ( as the DT describes it ) with those 16.000 having been working under this existing Home Office scheme, reinforced by the 2005 still existing EU policy. I wonder what degree of control, oversight & limitations there are on those 16.000. I’ve listened to pros & cons since hearing this but many are angry and not least because of the principle – illegality, the likely high percentage of those 16.000 being illegals, legal illegals to some, economic chancers, call them what you will. One assumes in the case of the ‘Care’ vacancies being filled that the body responsible is more efficient than most others, with their DBS / security checks where presumably full disclosure and background of applicants’ details are available, considering we are told most ‘irregulars’ arrive without documents etc., We can be sure though that none are part of the thousands now to lose their jobs in Port Talbot or presumably in our other main Steel plant in Scunthorpe ( The PM claims it is not part of the push to Net Zero. I am aware of the other factors involved but it’s hard to feel any positivity whatsoever about all this; to be the only major economy not to have our own high quality steel ) The PM has been questioned about the ‘lost’ 6000 migrants too ( No meaningful reply, issue avoided ) Then we have the 4000 plus outstanding ‘complex cases’ – and all the rest.
    I hope the UKG are proud of their ongoing attempts to reengineer our existence, the way we live with their skewed priorities and Net Zero wasteland production; our noses deep in diversity, our opinions and anger disregarded and their hands in our pockets. ( although I clearly recall quite some while back the PM telling us that we would need to change the way we live, well, he’s obviously keen to keep that promise )

  40. Lindsay+McDougall
    January 20, 2024

    So, hopefully you will agree hopefully with Richard Tice and myself – zero polpulation growth and negligible immigration.

    A helpful suggestion for you – if you want to win back voters from Reform, try stealing some of their policies. For example, income tax thresholds at ÂŁ20,000 and ÂŁ70,000.

  41. hefner
    January 20, 2024

    O/T only for those who like this type of reading:
    ‘Effective tax rates of MNEs: New evidence on global low-taxed profit’, OECD Taxation Working Papers No.67, 22/11/2023, 64 pp.
    See how multinational enterprises are likely to have a lower, sometimes much lower, effective tax rate than individuals.

    What is really interesting (5. Conclusion, p.36) is that ‘Some juridictions with high estimated average rates tax considerable shares of profits at low rates in the estimates’ ie, it is not because a country’s tax rate is announced to be ®high’ that companies registered in that country actually pay such a rate.

    See also companion paper 09/01/2024 ‘The global minimum tax and the taxation of MNE profit’, No.68, 87 pp.
    That’s what the OECD would like to be applied internationally 


    1. graham1946
      January 21, 2024

      Not surprised. It’s been said before that the top earners pay a lower tax rate than their cleaners.

  42. glen cullen
    January 20, 2024

    King’s Speech 2023 (Governments Mission Statement)
    ‘My Government will act to keep communities safe from crime, anti-social behaviour, terrorism and illegal migration.’
    And
    ‘My Government will deliver on the Illegal Migration Act passed earlier this year and on international agreements, to stop dangerous and illegal Channel crossings and ensure it is the government, not criminal gangs, who decides who comes to this country’

  43. Bill Smith
    January 20, 2024

    The assumptions set out for the migrants by Sir John in financial terms has not been proven not even presented, so we are having to take his presentation based on the few not proven facts presented and I have my fundamental doubts about the assumptions presented.

    Reply Unusual for you to disagree with an Eu number

  44. Peter Gardner
    January 21, 2024

    Why not copy the Australian system and set up a Training Britons Fund? Any employer importing labour would have to pay a heavy levy into the fund as well as paying for the visa. So it would be more expense to import labour than to employ a Brit. The UK’s Shortage categories provide the reverse incentive. The Skilling Australians Fund is used to finance training (obviously) of citizens, not immigrants, and encourages demand from employers for the training courses they require rather than having the government and woke institutions decide what training is provided. See https://www.dewr.gov.au/skilling-australians-fund-levy
    This system also informs the government fairly accurately on what the real skills shortages are and enables it to adjust the caps annually on the number of immigrants permitted in each skills category accordingly. UK has no caps either on the total number or the number in each category. it’s barmy.
    I say again Australia’s GDP per capita is nearly 50% higher than the UK’s.

  45. A-tracy
    January 21, 2024

    “In the first quarter of 2022, 83% of couple parents were employed compared to 65% of single parents. Of single parents, 30% were inactive, around double the proportion of couple parents in this position (15%).” Gingerbread

    Start to find out why they are inactive and what work can fit around school. Does their child’s school offer after school club for a reasonable sum? Are they not working because it would reduce their housing benefit so why work if it reduces what you get for ‘free’ there should be some ‘work’ expected for the subsidy and if they can’t find work for themselves we need to train to take on the roles in shortage occupations.

    Although what I expect would happen is they’d just hang around in a little clique with other people forced to do work in the community, chatting together instead of working. Today I saw four young men litter picking, one guy was picking up whilst the others strolled behind watching him work.

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