Winter fuel Payments.

[Dave Moore]

I doubt agreement will ever be reached on this.

Three quarters of the people working for me worked from home during the pandemic and a quarter had to come into work. Both categories felt the other had a better deal.

Having got bored of listening to arguments on the topicI concluded it was a score draw!

The guys working for me had to continue working and others were furloughed. Within a few days my guys were trying to get furloughed when they saw they could be at home on almost the same wages.

 

[niall Y]

I must have misunderstood, I thought it was about people having kids in the UK, not Lithuania etc

All joking aside, you have hit the nail on the head.

The dilemma lies in western populations not having enough children to replenish their numbers, Gone are the days when it was possible for a family to live off the wage of one. It now requires there to be two wage earners. Child care can easily swallow up the wage of one of the parents, so couples put off having families until they are financially more secure, which is often too late.

The only way you can overcome this economic reality is to have children despite the economic consequences. Then you can be freely criticised for being selfish enough to have children when you are poor.

 

[Diver Fred]

There is a difference between replenishing the numbers and population growth - if every family restricted their fecundancy to 2 births then by natural or un-natural deaths the population would remain fairly stable.
However in my lifetime, 70 years, the population of the UK has gone up 50%.
The world's population grew from an estimated 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.9 billion in 2021.
That growth rate is unsustainable.

 

[TRITON]

However in my lifetime, 70 years, the population of the UK has gone up 50%.

In 1960 the UK population was 53 million. today it is 67m
Not sure where you're getting your figures from Fred, but thats pretty far off 50%

As to immigration. The numbers are quite simple.

1.2m people came to the UK last year, and near 535,000 left. So net migration is about 685,000.

However, 670,000 died in the UK last year, and 605,000 were born. Obviously those born won’t be entering the workforce any time soon, so overall theres not a great deal of change. Except for the fact there are slightly more working adults

Either way, having more people at working age is beneficial, and we all know immigration often provides an economic net benefit to the U.K. economy, as well as helping to maintain the working-age population while also plugging the current skills gap in many industries.

 

[Fergie 307]

I can only assume that those who drone on about immigrants have not recently been to a McDonald's, Costa, Starbucks or similar. Or a motorway service area or had occasion to use the NHS or the care system, such as it is. In all these areas you find significant numbers of immigrant workers, often from eastern Europe. The NHS would be stopped dead in its tracks without them, and those descended from immigrants from all over the commonwealth.
Some would have you believe they are somehow stealing our jobs. But how exactly? Is there any evidence that any of these companies actively choose to employ foreigners, rather than locals?
So you do have to wonder why so few of these jobs appear to be going to our own, afterall we have plenty of unemployed.
It seems to me that you have to conclude that a significant factor must be that many of our own people aren't particularly interested in doing a fairly menial job, where you may have to work pretty hard for not a lot of money.
It would be very interesting to know how many applications any particular employer gets from UK nationals for every job that is eventually given to an immigrant. My suspicion is it would be very few, or none at all in many cases.

 

[TRITON]

So you do have to wonder why so few of these jobs appear to be going to our own, afterall we have plenty of unemployed.

After 14 years of tory rule theres little to nobody left who could be identified as a 'benefit scrounger' The tories hate and i mean hate social security. In their tenure they have implemented policy after policy taking people off benefits. Even the disabled who through no fault of their own are in no position to work
At the same time they have lowered wages in real time, and increased the cost of living substantially and to the point even having a job isnt a guarantee of a decent standard of living.

 

[spanner48]

What a throughly unpleasant view. There are many decent people on this forum and I have learned a great deal about woodworking but I've had enough of the small minded, ignorant bigots who, although in a minority, I'm fed up of hearing from. Its people like this who fuel prejudice and stupidity in our society and we see what the result of their actions are in what is happening in the last few days. I'm cancelling my membership of the forum with regret but I've had enough.

Unregretted

 

[John Hughes01]

Many of us are genuinely concerned about the dilution and disappearance of our native culture - look at what Holland did when,having welcomed migrants like Germany,suddenly realised that 8% of their population was muslim. yes,they did a quick uturn. I would imagine that if we look at demographic figures on birth rates in the UK we would find that the numbers of kids born to native UK woman has gone down as they follow their careers, get used used to the wine bar lifestyle and leave it too late to start a family or just don't want the trouble of having kids. You may also find that the birth rate in immigrant families has risen and,as we will now pay them to have as many kids as they wish, it is a cash bonus - Treasure Island again! Whilst I think the recent riots were appalling,unjustified and simply an excuse for the scum that is always there under a very thin veneer of civilisation to surface and it is the hot season there is a genuine concern that nothing has or is being done to fix the immigration problem and I can't see an answer but I do know that billions is being wasted trying to solve the prblem.

 

[Noel]

I think it's now time to close this thread.