Please find below the link to my interview with Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4. We discussed the need for tighter control on immigration, given that the Centre for Policy Studies today announced that net migration for this year is expected to surpass 700,000.
You can find it between 1:36:07-1:41-21.
May 15, 2023
Yes, all reasonable points.
Nick Robinson or Laura Kuenssberg are better interviewers than journeyman Justin Webb and the discussion would be better if they were asking the questions and responding to the points made.
I no longer listen to the Today Programme. It is not what it once was.
Still, at least you didn’t have to talk the clueless Sarah Montague (Lady Something or Other) on the One o’clock news.
May 15, 2023
At last you had a sensible interview on the Today Programme this morning.
You managed to put the issuers over housing, growth and migration over in a very clear manner and were hardly challenged on them at all. Your points are so obvious and sensible, it is hard to see how any sensible commentator to the right of Corbyn could disagree with them.
So why is the Conservative Party leadership not adopting them ? It can only be that they are being unduly influenced by big business which has become used to bringing in millions of low paid workers, at no cost to themselves, while saddling taxpayers with the responsibility of housing them plus providing medical, education and every other requirement.
As you said so clearly, the idea of bringing in up to 750,000 new people a year is completely unsustainable and has to stop immediately.
May 15, 2023
I think the wrong thinking Treasury and Business Dept have undue influence here, as well as big business, believing that mass immigration raises GDP and that that, even a tiny rise, is all that matters and can then be boasted about abroad. What we want of course is for GDP per capita to go up, and what they are encouraging has the opposite effect.
May 16, 2023
Chris S – It is all part of the Globalist NWO WEF UK Establishment plan. YOU are irrelevant .
May 15, 2023
I see the government has decided the retain the famous “bent banana” EU banana grading system. That’s how useless they are.
May 15, 2023
Did you have to undergo a pre interview?
Reply Yes an extensive one as usual with reference back to editor
May 15, 2023
I’m really surprised that the BBC allowed the interview to go ahead !
May 16, 2023
They normally wouldn’t, but a higher priority for them was to peddle a story in which the Usurper is being toppled. Sir John had to repeat again and again that it was policy which needed to change.
May 15, 2023
I noticed John Redwood while rightly emphasising changing key policies dodged the question (for understandable reasons) of whether Rishi Sunak should lead the Conservative Party into the next General Election. However not just one but both of these (changing policies and changing Leader) are necessary for the Conservative Party to stand any chance at the next election. Rishi Sunak couldn’t sell anything much, let alone a Damascene Conversion to the British public. The argument that the Conservatives would look ridiculous in changing Leader yet again would be true for just a few weeks but would soon become a very minor handicap, nowhere near as bad as going into an election with a useless Leader instead of a Leader who is good at electioneering.
Let’s face it the competition is pathetic. Having objected strongly to voters presenting IDs at polling stations as supposedly too difficult, Starmer is now indicating he wants to enfranchise only those among resident EU citizens who have paid taxes here for a number of years – will they be expected to bring many years of their tax returns with them for inspection to the polling station (or at least to the Town Hall beforehand) to prove their right to vote? Starmer can sure match Sunak (who is going to compulsorily massively extend Maths teaching without Maths teachers) in sheer stupidity.
May 16, 2023
Agreed. Merely looking ridiculous is less risky than delaying dumping a bad leader. Action now would prevent increasing harm from building voter aversion into permanence. A great deal of better could be achieved with proper direction in just six months. An added year of goodness before an election creates a valuable difference.
May 16, 2023
People with Settled Status already had to prove they had been in the UK for more than five years, they also have a NIN, so it should be easy for the tax authorities to check whether the person has been paying tax and at what rate.
So in terms of practical checks, Starmer’s proposal is not that daft, certainly not more complicated than for the police to check whether a driver has a driving license or whether the car has a valid MOT.
No need to bring years of tax returns to the polling station.
May 16, 2023
So what do they bring then? With a UK driving licence or NI number they might or might not have years of tax returns. So what’s the qualification to vote?
May 16, 2023
Let’s examine some pitfalls:
-Tax returns are meant to be confidential
-Local Councils,not hmrc run elections
-EU citizens resident here would have to apply if they wanted to vote once every 4 or 5 years when they think they have reached the tax contribution threshold
-They would have to apply for documentation to both hmrc and the local council for a vote (you wouldn’t expect the local Council to be up to applying to hmrc on their behalf even if that didn’t breach confidentiality).
-hmrc can’t even get ordinary tax returns right. They made a mess of mine a few months ago (creating a second notional version as they failed to refer to my actual tax return), evidently not being able to cope with their workload when still mainly ‘working from home’ after lockdown. So don’t expect them to get suffrage application forms right nor done on time (which would create controversies over depriving EU citizens of a newly acquired right to vote).
So though what you say might be hypothetically correct in the real world it is crazy and Starmer is useless as a political leader not to foresee what is easily foreseeable
May 15, 2023
If Australia can do it why can’t the UK? A few decades ago Australia set a training target of a proportion of turnover to be spent on training for employers and if the set proportion of turnover was not met, the Government took the balance as tax. Coupled with a policy of employing Austrlalians first that directed funds into the training employers needed. They did not pay for useless qualifications. Today a similar linkage is provided by the visa system. An employer importing an employee must pay a considerable sum for the visa and that money goes into a fund providing for skilling Australians – not immigrants (https://www.dewr.gov.au/skilling-australians-fund). Of course ‘Australians’ includes long term immigrants who have become Australian citizens (harder to qualify than in UK, I suspect). Policies like these ensure that Australia has a skilled and productive labour force for the long term. It still needs immigrants for even faster growth but builds its core strengths at the same time which provides for a higher value added productive and flexible economy.
It isn’t difficult. Why can’t UK adopt similar policies? UK’s political class seem to have difficulty looking beyond the EU as if the EU is the world’s benchmark. The world is a much bigger place than Europe and is full of examples of better ways of running an economy – if you look.
May 16, 2023
PS. Partly as a result of Australia’s immigration and training policies Australia’s GDP/capita is almost 50% higher than the UK’s – US$k66 compared with UK’s US$k46.
May 16, 2023
Saw N Farage interview on BBC newsnight last evening Wow! – “It’s all the fault of the tories” – so much so that no blame for anything that has happened should ever come to his door – nothing to do with his predictions everything’s wrong because of the EU and other people WoW!