erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
Do you have any evidence other than your own perception that mugging pensioners is more prevalent today than it was in the 60's or 70's ?
Every government for the last 50 years fiddles the crime figures. Do one of your polls it might be 'anecdotal' but we can't all be wrong. OK easy question we agree both need tackling, which one first? Which one is going to get the most immediate results?
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
So says the legal expert.
Ok simple question did he settle for the amount of the deficit? If he was legally obliged to why not?
He did not legally have to pay a penny. There was no legal mechanism in place to force him to pay he settled because he was terrified he'd lose his knighthood
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
Hard or impossible ? There is quite a difference between the two. Feels like goalposts being shifted to me.
Semantics again. OK do you think that the inland revenue had a go at breaking the Vestey family trust? All the laws for 70 odd years never cracked it. Are you confident that they are now paying the right amount of tax?
OK in your utopian society you abolish private education because it is unfair. Obviously it will be a hammer blow for the Milne family etc etc etc but I guess they can simply create some special academies for party members and charge the people. But the main thing is it will punish the rich. Do you seriously think they wont send their children abroad to be educated? Are you that naive?
If you want to press me I'd go with impossible but even if you could convince me it was possible it would take decades and decades.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
I think your frustration is that I am declining to play along with your attempts at obfuscation of the points
I'm not frustrated I'm amused visualising you twisting yourself to avoid answering a question you don't want to because the answer doesn't suit.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
Unless they are Jewish refugee migrants rather than non Jewish economic migrants ?
If you can not tell the difference between us taking Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, Ugandan Asians or Hungarians in 1956 and Albanians who think the grass is greener then I give up. Let's be honest you will agree we need a sensible immigration policy but if I was to put 1 million immigrants in front of you and ask you who shouldn't really qualify you wouldn't. Just say I want completely open borders, I'd have a lot of respect for honesty.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
And it is not spin to estimate the figure as zero as you did in your analysis because it is 'hard' to come up with a better estimate ?
OK how much VAT did immigrants pay last year. Until you give me that figure please explain how anyone can arrive at the figures that immigration produces x amount of net benefit. Breakdown those figures for me? You are big on evidence show me that profit and loss account. You putting up a quote saying it is you will agree is anecdotal evidence.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
How many of them work here 'under the table' ? I would venture to suggest that it is not so close to zero as to be statically the same as zero in effect. How many of them use free hospital treatment ? Again I would venture to suggest that this is more than zero as well and that the state national insurance available to them does not cover all the costs of treatment they get under it. How many use the 'police' ? Government offices of any kind ?
Working under the table isn't claiming benefits is it?
How many purchase private medical insurance thus putting more money into the economy? If you look at the forums here when the new insurance rules came in for residency it was pretty clear that the majority weren't troubling the Health service over here.
Sure many use the government offices to pay their taxes so I'm struggling to see your point,
Please point me to one purely English person here that has received welfare payments or a house or is in line for a pension? Just one, it'll be easy surely?
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
Study after study, considerably better constructed and less biased and peer reviewed
I love the peer reviewed. Pssst you know they all peer review each others stuff? Its a very cozy club.
OK you bring up climate change.
As a % how much CO2 is in the atmosphere?
As a % how much of that CO2 is man made?
For the UK to remove their 1% contribution how much will that cost?
How much will it cost for the world to achieve 0 emmissions?
What will be the drop in average temperature when we do?
What is the optimum amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that we should be aiming for? Obviously we need some for life to exist.
All easy questions, after all the science is settled and when the world is expected to stump up trillions to sort this we need to know it's going to work. After all sometimes solutions can cause more harm than good and with the cost its going to be a one shot deal.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
I mention the USA because if it is true that economic migrants on average are a net drain on a country then it begs the question how did a nation that was built on such economic migration for a century or more become the pre eminent economic power during that same period ? As to China and Japan do you know how much more economically successful they would be today had they had similar levels of economic migration in to them for similar periods as the USA had, for that is the only relevant question. That they have 'coped' is to miss the point entirely.
Well as the USA pretty much had just prairie Indians and was pretty thinly populated they did need some people in it to grow. A densly populated country not so much. So again apples and oranges. Although if you listen to many liberals those immigrants were a total blight and should have left the native americans to it. When you say Japan and China being more economically successful then you obviously agree that they have been economically successful.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
No it would only be moot if the absolute amount a persons income increased exactly matched how much the 'costs' you listed increased and if that were true it would also completely undermine the analysis that says 'at £25k pa a person is net drain on the UK but at higher amounts they are not'.
The £25k pa a person was chosen because this was the figure that was quoted as far too high as to be a cut off for our new points system. OK if you don't believe in totally open borders and we will never be full enough then give me a figure or some parameters on which we should say someone doesn't qualify.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
You are putting words in to my mouth. I have not and am not arguing that any and all billionaires are disgusting and take out far more than they put in. I am arguing that we should seek to limit and reduce selfish egregious behaviour from anyone regardless of if they are super rich or not and I am doing so in the face of your argument (as I understand it) that we should seek to try and do so for selfish people who are not billionaires and not do so with regards to billionaires because such would be pointless tilting at windmills.
No I am up for us reducing selfish egregious behaviour wherever we can. The point at which this started was those people deciding that the NHS only times shouldn't apply to them. Up for sorting that or should we go after your US Senator insider trading first?
I'm sure you will agree this crisis means that we need to prioritise.
erol wrote: ↑Tue 24 Mar 2020 6:05 pm
So do you believe that migrants to the UK who are genuine refugees and not just economic migrants end up ultimately being a net drain on the UK and not net contributors ?
I believe that as a net, migrants are probably not net contributors. With our deficit probably not many of our population are but it comes down to the old argument. There's a fire in the school wouldn't you get your own kids out first or would that be selfish.
But if you can produce some figures that proves that they are then I'm all ears. You'll forgive me if I need something a little more specific than they obviously might pay an amount of money that I can't actually prove.
I did put up my admittedly back of a fag packet calculations which you have yet to say are wrong. I'm happy to expand on them if you like?
I think we have a moral obligation to take in genuine refugees and genuine asylum seekers but we do not have the capacity to take in a never ending supply of economic migrants. My geography isn't great but I'm struggling to see how an Albanian is a Syrian asylum seeker.
I do think that we have a moral obligation to help other people around the world who are struggling bearing in mind we don't have a money tree.
But I can't help feel that we might be able to help a lot more people and get a lot more bang for our buck if we used the money that it might take to say home a family of Ethiopians and pay for any births, education, healthcare, welfare, pensions etc etc in one of the more expensive countries on Earth and keep them there and spend our money there.
I'm also willing to take the risk that we might miss out that one of their children may invent a better train timetable or figure out why Des O'Conner is so shiny.