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poll

Posted: Thu 20 Feb 2020 6:49 am
by erol
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/lang ... 66581.html
Most Brits believe those moving to a new country should learn the language spoken there, according to a poll.

A YouGov survey of 3,180 adults found 83 per cent of people think those who move to live or work in a new country should have to learn the language of that country.

Only nine per cent of those surveyed said that those who move should not have to learn the language when they make the move.

Re: poll

Posted: Thu 20 Feb 2020 10:20 am
by wanderer
Sons mother in law doesn't speak english her children did the translation for her
Quite the norm with UK Indian immigrants

Re: poll

Posted: Thu 20 Feb 2020 12:38 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
If they go to a country where they need to support themselves by working I think they would find it very difficult to work without speaking the native tongue. I’m assuming this is why you will get 10 points for it out of the 70 required to apply for work in the UK under the new rules. I think if you don’t need to work it is still a good idea to learn enough to interact with the locals so as to intergrate. Obviously if you move to a country and have zero interested in working or intergrating then you have no need to learn a new language

Re: poll

Posted: Fri 21 Feb 2020 9:51 pm
by jofra
I would agree with ETS. I would further add that if it is a permanent move but able to self-support without work, it's not necessary to learn the language - but (IMO) sensible and (especially) courteous to learn it. For "swallows" (like myself) who spend 3/4 months per year, perhaps helpful - and again (IMO) courteous to learn it. (I've managed to acquire a few phrases and words, but am ashamed to admit I've not got more...)
I don't think it should be mandatory - it feels a little too much like dictatorship/tyranny, but encouragement and incentives are a better way...
Incidentally, I suspect that even learning (e.g.) "American" or "Australian" would not necessarily help if moving there - those are more a "culture/mind-set" adjustment...

Re: poll

Posted: Sat 22 Feb 2020 6:03 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
Reared it’s ugly head on Question Time which gave that dreadful girl a chance to spout off some nonsense and call them facts. What is interesting is when money in the NHS is wasted, some like to quote it as a % because the NHS budget is so massive. For example the cost of health tourism. It’s not £300 million, it’s only 0.3% of the entire budget. Its a clever tactic so I always ask them for 0.3% of their income, eg if they earn £25000 I demand £75. You don’t have to tell them why or what it’s for just remind them it’s only 0.3%.

Re: poll

Posted: Mon 24 Feb 2020 5:46 pm
by erol
Bit like when I have been taking 4 beers round to my mates for years for our weekly get together and then tell them I have this week brought 2 extra beers , because I was going to just bring 2 but instead bought 4, making 2 extra

Re: poll

Posted: Mon 24 Feb 2020 6:36 pm
by wanderer
EnjoyingTheSun wrote:Reared it’s ugly head on Question Time which gave that dreadful girl a chance to spout off some nonsense and call them facts. What is interesting is when money in the NHS is wasted, some like to quote it as a % because the NHS budget is so massive. For example the cost of health tourism. It’s not £300 million, it’s only 0.3% of the entire budget. Its a clever tactic so I always ask them for 0.3% of their income, eg if they earn £25000 I demand £75. You don’t have to tell them why or what it’s for just remind them it’s only 0.3%.
I gave up on question time but was this the women ?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... orter.html

Re: poll

Posted: Mon 24 Feb 2020 11:50 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
wanderer wrote:
EnjoyingTheSun wrote:Reared it’s ugly head on Question Time which gave that dreadful girl a chance to spout off some nonsense and call them facts. What is interesting is when money in the NHS is wasted, some like to quote it as a % because the NHS budget is so massive. For example the cost of health tourism. It’s not £300 million, it’s only 0.3% of the entire budget. Its a clever tactic so I always ask them for 0.3% of their income, eg if they earn £25000 I demand £75. You don’t have to tell them why or what it’s for just remind them it’s only 0.3%.
I gave up on question time but was this the women ?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... orter.html
No she was the ugly head, obviously a total bigot but the girl was Ash Sarkar who is one of the left wing activists who consistently complain about not getting representation in the media but short of reading the daily weather couldn’t be on much more

Re: poll

Posted: Mon 24 Feb 2020 11:52 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
erol wrote:Bit like when I have been taking 4 beers round to my mates for years for our weekly get together and then tell them I have this week brought 2 extra beers , because I was going to just bring 2 but instead bought 4, making 2 extra
Whenever I got one of those offers like if you buy one for £5 you can have the other one for £1 I just used to say I’ll just have the other one then

Re: poll

Posted: Fri 28 Feb 2020 5:42 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
One thing that did come up was that immigrants are a net contributor to the UK

https://twitter.com/ayocaesar/status/12 ... 66533?s=21

This fact was thrown in without a challenge because our Home Office will helpfully supply figures that can sort of prove it Ish if you don’t dig too deep, take a lot on trust and don’t use much logic. After all it is an emotive subject and to publicise that every Asylum seeker that we accept could come with a potential £500,000 bill won’t play too well.

I’m often accused of coming up with anecdotal evidence and such like but let me float a few back of my fag packet figures here. It is to look at purely the statement eg the financial cost, not any social benefits or morality.

Let’s say we have a couple coming to the UK from the Third World.

They are both 25 and come here with three children aged 5, 6 and 7 so no cost to us of their birth in a NHS hospital.

They both work for a salary of £25,000 each.

None of the above is an outrageous example imo.
It is a fact that the third world birth rate is higher and £25,000 is the figure that is deemed by many as too high with regard to the new UK points system. It is £5000 lower than the average wage but as we are often told immigrants take on the lower paid jobs.

We have over twice as many immigrants from non EU countries as we do from EU countries.
One figure I have seen quoted on FullFact is EU immigrants contribute £1.05 for every £1 they take out. For non EU countries they put in £0.85 for every £1 they take out. That doesn’t seem an unreasonable estimate and in isolation kind of makes you wonder about net contributions given the respective numbers but moving on.

Remember we are only talking the cost/net financial contributions. I accept that an immigrant may cure the Coronavirus, win the X Factor or give us the most effective way to de fluff your navel but we are talking pounds shillings and pence and Mr and Mrs Average.

The cost to the state of educating a child at school is roughly £4,700 per pupil at primary school and £6,200 per pupil at secondary school. For ease let’s say a linear £5,500 per year. Let’s say none of our couples 3 children go onto higher education so they are going to go to school for 10-12 years.
So the bill to the state to educate those 3 children is £181,500 working on zero inflation and rises.
Also up to 16 they will each qualify for child benefit of £20.70 per week for the first and £13.70 for each of the other two. So that’s a shade under £25,000 again working on zero inflation and rises.
So the cost to the state for our couple just for the 3 children being alive and going to school is £206,500.
Our couple on £25,000 each will each pay roughly £2500 tax and £2000 national insurance so they are contributing £9000 a year between them.
They both work uninterrupted for 42 years until the 67 retirement age so they contribute a total of £378,000. So after their children’s schooling and child benefits they are contributing a net £171,500 over their working lives.


Let’s assume the state has made no provision for housing.
The wife is going out to work in the big wide world which isn’t always so and maybe less so amongst certain demographics due to cultural reasons.
They do not claim for help with school meals, school uniform etc etc.
None of the children go to 6th form
None of the children go to University and run up a student loan which they are never going to repay
The five of them only make the most minimal call on the NHS because £171,500 over 42 years for two people and say 33 years for the children until they are 16, and not supported by the parents, isn’t paying for too many heart transplants.

Which then leaves the million dollar question. What happens to our couple then? We deport them and they receive no pension, which doesn’t sound terribly fair to me? Otherwise once they start to receive their state pension they aren’t going to remain net contributors for very long.
Even if we repeat this model for every immigrant I’m struggling to see the whole net contributor argument no matter what Home Office figures might be dredged up.

For example there are at least 115,000 Somalians in the UK and the unemployment rate amongst them is 40% plus. So we need 43,000 of our couples, 86,000 tax and NI contributions to just pay for the Somalians job seekers allowance before we even look at housing them, NHS, schooling etc etc.

So no I’m not seeing it.

I accept you can throw in a billionaire that will offset many of the bills and skew the figures but that simply encourages a points system where we are choosy.
Maybe Russian oligarchs get an automatic 50 points and Somalians get an automatic minus 50 points?

It sounds harsh but as the lady said, stealing the line of a famous conservative commentator. facts don’t care about your feelings.

Re: poll

Posted: Sat 29 Feb 2020 9:04 am
by kibsolar1999
you forgot that in addition to the roughly £2500 tax and £2000 national insurance, VAT, import duties and other taxes apply.
another , say , 20% of 25.000.

before you complain about the 300 million a year "health tourism" due to "bad management" of the NHS, you could better open your mouth to the in total 16% (not 0,03%) VAT evation, which adds to 15 billion a year, 50 times the 300 million. on top comes other tax evations. i just say jersey, guernsey, isle of man... and so on.. the virgin islands just made it to the black list of the EU... Turkey got a transition time till end of 2020. all of them are also used by british people / companies.

and when the tax payer has to pay for housing a somalian, then be sure that the landlord is not somalian. these are either UK private people, companies, or blue blood or church owned and get good money for often rat holes.

Re: poll

Posted: Sat 29 Feb 2020 2:59 pm
by EnjoyingTheSun
kibsolar1999 wrote:you forgot that in addition to the roughly £2500 tax and £2000 national insurance, VAT, import duties and other taxes apply.
another , say , 20% of 25.000.
As I said my figures were very scaled down back of fag packet calculations which I think highlight that it is extremely unlikely that as a whole immigrants are net contributors to the UK.
To figure out what they spend their net £20,500 on and at what tax rate would get us into a fair bit of conjecture.

I think my example was pretty fair because if we are looking at balance of probabilities then the couple in question would in all likelihood;

Have waited to come to the UK to have their children at a NHS hospital.

Wouldn’t both work for 42 years without break in fact the wife might not work at all or part time at most.

At least one of the children would go onto higher education.

We would be making some provision for social housing

And they would both collect their deserved pensions when they would begin to need the NHS far more.

All of which would wipe out a couple of grand we make in VAT. Also if we save money in one place we can give money somewhere else so maybe a family's benefits could go up and they can buy more and make up the shortfall in VAT.

So on the whole my figures were simplified but I feel fair.

But let me ask you, do you really think the immigrants are net contributors? And it is a purely financial question.

Immigration has in the main been a positive experience for the UK but any suggestion of implementing any control has you marked as a fascist.
Some obviously want zero immigration. Many will pay lip service to immigration controls but will knock back any suggestion whatsoever. Some want completely open borders. TBH I don’t mind what virtue signaling people do, as long as they pay for it and not me and mine.
kibsolar1999 wrote: before you complain about the 300 million a year "health tourism" due to "bad management" of the NHS, you could better open your mouth to the in total 16% (not 0,03%) VAT evation, which adds to 15 billion a year, 50 times the 300 million. on top comes other tax evations. i just say jersey, guernsey, isle of man... and so on.. the virgin islands just made it to the black list of the EU... Turkey got a transition time till end of 2020. all of them are also used by british people / companies.
‘Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’

The figures have the smell of politics of envy BS but let’s say they are 100% accurate or even understating the amount.

Can we stop billonaires avoiding tax? No. Is that fair? No

Life isn’t fair and billionaires will pay pretty much what they feel is fair. That’s how it is and to be realistic that is how it will always be. But not all of them wander around with a Dick Dastardly moustache and beat their unpaid workers. Many create jobs and wealth. They may keep what you feel is an unfair share but we need more billionaires not less.

Re the other part of the statement, can we stop our NHS managers paying £65 for a toilet roll? I personally think that is attainable or if they can’t manage it we can at least save their salary. I never thought John McDonnell had the wit to stop tax shelters but I would trust him to buy a toilet roll.

But as you said it’s only 0.3% so I will PM you my bank details and you can send me £100 or whatever is a miserly 0.3% of your yearly income for me to spend how I wish. OK?
kibsolar1999 wrote: and when the tax payer has to pay for housing a somalian, then be sure that the landlord is not somalian. these are either UK private people, companies, or blue blood or church owned and get good money for often rat holes.
Not sure what point you are making here, it again sounds the politics of envy.
Again not every landlord is The Duke of Westminster. I’m sure some living here have rented out their property in the UK and I’ve not bumped into any eccentric billionaire expats out here.
If someone is providing a service then they are entitled to charge for that service, no? I’ll give you a clue, every system that tries to stop that has completely and utterly failed.

I have nothing against Somalians but statistics and logic tell me they are generally going to come with rather a large bill attached.

I do not blame them going to the UK to improve themselves and believe the richer countries have a duty to help the poorer ones.
The problem when we fudge and hide costs is we also hide solutions.

The population density in Somalia is 25 per Km2 The population density in the UK is 13 times that.
Were we to support a Somalian family in say London we would have to supply housing. schooling, healthcare and benefits in one of the costliest cities/countries in the World.

Or we could target our foreign aid better and help them in their own country at a tenth of the cost. Maybe suggest India pay for their own moon landing and build some schools, hospitals and wells in Ethiopia?