OV9

Oh and in response to the Pakistan and Bangladesh comment further up - we were originally talking about the dehumanisation/demonisation of "illegals" i.e. those who come by irregular transport routes, which doesn't tend to be Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
Those guys tend to be expired student and work visa.

But regardless, asylum extends to religious or sectarian persecution too. We'll look after you if your life is in danger if you stay at home. That doesn't seem unreasonable.
Especially as former commonwealth countries who previously fought for the British empire, and whose current problems of religious intolerance have at least some of their origins in British colonial policy (Indian Partition, in particular).

Nefarious wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 12:51 pm In my neighbour's house fire example, you wouldn't say they couldn't sleep on your living room floor because there wasn't enough food in the cupboard or enough poo roll in the downstairs cloakroom - you'd pop to the shops!

But that's not a valid call back to your neighbour example. You neighbour's house burns down so you invite your neighbour to move into your house permanently - they will no longer attempt to house themselves - and you furthermore agree to be financially responsible for them, and their children, current and future, going forward.

I like my neighbour but not that much

And I take it that when you say "You'd pop to the shops", you mean "Tax the Rich"

Nefarious wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 1:01 pm Oh and in response to the Pakistan and Bangladesh comment further up - we were originally talking about the dehumanisation/demonisation of "illegals" i.e. those who come by irregular transport routes, which doesn't tend to be Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
Those guys tend to be expired student and work visa.

But regardless, asylum extends to religious or sectarian persecution too. We'll look after you if your life is in danger if you stay at home. That doesn't seem unreasonable.
Especially as former commonwealth countries who previously fought for the British empire, and whose current problems of religious intolerance have at least some of their origins in British colonial policy (Indian Partition, in particular).

They still end up within the same asylum system and contribute to the overall statistics, though. They're still feeding the negative sentiment felt nationally.

I get the point, but those countries are relatively stable yet their residents are some of the main nationalities seeking protection. I'm not adverse to offering protection based on the example scenario you mentioned, but there's also many documented cases of frivolous asylum claims once a resident has legally overstayed their welcome. There's an entire industry on gaming the system and it's difficult to disprove claims.

A sensible asylum system would also include the government using significantly more diplomatic pressure on partner nations to rectify abuses on human rights that lead to residents seeking protection. But then again, I don't know what levers the government is able to use in such circumstances.

dinny_g wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 1:34 pm

Nefarious wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 12:51 pm In my neighbour's house fire example, you wouldn't say they couldn't sleep on your living room floor because there wasn't enough food in the cupboard or enough poo roll in the downstairs cloakroom - you'd pop to the shops!

But that's not a valid call back to your neighbour example. You neighbour's house burns down so you invite your neighbour to move into your house permanently - they will no longer attempt to house themselves - and you furthermore agree to be financially responsible for them, and their children, current and future, going forward.

I like my neighbour but not that much

And I take it that when you say "You'd pop to the shops", you mean "Tax the Rich"

And there lies the rub - your comment is based on the wholly false notion that migrants are a burden to the system. They are not. They are a short term cost, but a long term gain. Over a lifetime on average, each migrant makes a positive net contribution of £28,000 for non-EEA migrants and or £78,000 for EEA. So far from "agreeing to be financially responsible for them, and their children, current and future, going forward", in this metaphor, you are putting them up for a short time, before they start delivering daily gifts to your door.
As an aside, the BMA currently has 1,200 doctors on its books who were once asylum seekers - the cost of supporting a refugee to the point of being a practicing UK doctor is around £25k. The cost of training a new UK-born doctor to the point of practice is around £200-250k.

And referring back to your previous point about how many refugees we can take with it having "almost zero" impact - the total number of asylum applications was around 70k in 2025. 0.1% of the UK population, roughly. And given that yesterday's migrants are more than paying in their net contributions for the short term costs of today's migrants, I would comfortably say that the impact of current refugees is not significantly impacting the economic welfare of native population.

And, to further spell out me metaphor - by "pop to the shops", I mean ensure a level and geographic distribution of public service provision suitable for the actual population. Given that migrants are, on average, net contributors, then, no, I don't mean, "tax the rich". We can have a whole different conversation about the optimal tax and public expenditure regime (neither of which are currently optimal), but I think that's dragging us away from the key points of:
- asylum seekers are people too, and in the most part, victims of circumstances not of their creation
- history has shown migration to be an economically *good* thing
- it is the inadequate system for processing them that has created social problems, rather than the migrants themselves, or the concept of migration
- the whole "blame the migrants" rhetoric is a perfect storm of different scams (from mainstream government to distract away from regressive policy and outright corruption/ineptitude, and from populist parties as a disingenuous vehicle to rush them into power at any cost)

Ed milliband as favourite next chancellor is the scariest thing I've seen all day.

Starmer being replaced by Burnham or our Ange?

and one final key point from me Nef:
- We do not have an obligation or moral responsibility to take in every refugee from any conflict zone or place of personal danger who wants to come here

Just come back from work and really enjoyed catching up with this thread

dinny_g wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 5:10 pm and one final key point from me Nef:
- We do not have an obligation or moral responsibility to take in every refugee from any conflict zone or place of personal danger who wants to come here

Don't think he ever said that.

No understand that - I’m saying that. Just trying to be open and transparent with my views seeing as others have

dinny_g wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 5:10 pm and one final key point from me Nef:
- We do not have an obligation or moral responsibility to take in every refugee from any conflict zone or place of personal danger who wants to come here

And again I'd broadly agree. We, as a collective human world, rather than as a country, have both obligation and moral responsibility to look after every refugee from any conflict zone or place of personal danger. As said above, this is a fundamentally international problem (and will become increasingly so as the distribution of needed natural resources changes), and should be dealt with more effectively at that level. Exactly the problem with a generally more isolationist approach and a wider trend to withdraw from or lessen the importance of international bodies.

But ultimately ultimately it has to be a "no fail" problem. There is no scenario where it OK to just let people suffer, IMO.

Broccers wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 4:52 pm Starmer being replaced by Burnham or our Ange?

If Burnham were already an MP, I think the formal process would have started by now for him to replace Starmer.

We risk a Streeting/Rayner fight with Streeting winning. I’d prefer Miliband to the lot of them - but I think losing a general election is a real barrier to him becoming Labour leader again.

Yeah I don’t think Rayner has the backing to make a run at it. I’m not sure if she’s mended fences at the unions while she’s been quieter.

It’s going to be Wes which will make Starmer’s leadership look competent.

I'm not sure of any of the potential Starmer's potential replacements will be any better in the short term - and that may mean they don't get the opportunity to be anything other than opposition

Jobbo wrote: Tue May 12, 2026 8:26 am

Broccers wrote: Mon May 11, 2026 4:52 pm Starmer being replaced by Burnham or our Ange?

If Burnham were already an MP, I think the formal process would have started by now for him to replace Starmer.

We risk a Streeting/Rayner fight with Streeting winning. I’d prefer Miliband to the lot of them - but I think losing a general election is a real barrier to him becoming Labour leader again.

Unfortunately I can only see it getting worse

Gilts don't lie and UK plc is in deep trouble

First minister has resigned - the first domino to fall ??

Gilts going up not because Starmer is a dead man but because whoever replaces him will be worse. Another election cycle wasted…
King Charles might as well save his breath and not bother with his speech later.

Getting rid of Starmer would be mistake. Yes, he's far from perfect and I'm no Labour voter but there is no credible competent alternative that won't fuck up our economy even more and spook the markets. He needs to stay.

Yep, our GDP figures are always just teetering into positive territory. It won’t take make to drawdown into a full blown recession.

NHS waits are down, interest rates and unemployment seem to be heading the right way, GDP is showing a bit of life, and inflation has gone from crisis-level to just uncomfortable.

Yet Starmer still seems to get treated less like a disappointing PM and more like someone people genuinely can’t stand. After the last few years of the tories and chopping and changing PMs, I thought we needed stability.

MikeHunt wrote: Tue May 12, 2026 10:19 am NHS waits are down, interest rates and unemployment seem to be heading the right way, GDP is showing a bit of life, and inflation has gone from crisis-level to just uncomfortable.

Yet Starmer still seems to get treated less like a disappointing PM and more like someone people genuinely can’t stand. After the last few years of the tories and chopping and changing PMs, I thought we needed stability.

immigration is downs and processing is up too, but it all doesn’t matter. He rightly declared some glasses that he was given so that’s that. He’s the devil.

I’m not saying Labour have done a great job, they certainly didn’t cover themselves with glory with the way they handled the winter fuel allowance cock up and the NI raise, but the press have been on a hatchet job from day one.

Even now, they’re more interested with laying into Starmer for calling Farage a grifter than they are for Farage obviously grifting. They're on the same road for Polanski now, so that’s a done deal too.

I can’t see how Starmer can hold on much longer, i’m sure theres a new nickname being made up even as we speak to rhyme with his name for the Reformists to chant.