State Pension Affordability

[Protagoras]

Well, BoE deputy saying that the stock market is over priced is a warning although I think this should be obvious to most people born this century.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75kp1y43lgo

I sold a lot of stocks in Q4/25 since I was expecting the market to adjust, but based on the AI bubble, not furtherance of the US Empire. So that still leaves AI, private credit and energy as the main known risks remaining. If government tries to bail out private credit we should have a national strike - we can't accept more public debt and cuts to bail out private risk takers.

A vote for Reform is a bit like the protest votes for Brexit. Careful what you wish for!
But if Reform could deliver benefit and immigration cuts it would make them popular with the old Tory voters and would seriously annoy the devolved administrations.

I'm not even certain that the FIAT currency system could be unwound to return to a gold standard - is there even enough gold in the world to allow this?

[malvolio]

Just to be clear, most immigrants to the UK do not get here via "people smugglers". They get a Visa. Illegal immigration is but a tiny fraction of the total number. Just sayin, because a lot of people do not seem to know that and conflate "immigrant" with "arrived on a small boat".

I think they got it right in Japan. Population is aging and shrinking, but they never allowed mass immigration, although recently Japan is getting more immigrants. This caused a decline in GDP. But the people themselves did not get poorer - if anything richer as a smaller population inheritted the wealth of a larger one.

A government wants a high GDP so it can do stuff with it - often stupid stuff like starting a war, or building a high speed rail line that costs way too much and gets half cancelled so is basically just about useless anyway. They inflate away the populations wealth as a result. It isn't really what people want, would be better to allow people to accumulate wealth, live more healthily, work less, put up with less political tension caused by immigration.

You're still not getting the point.

Nobody is against genuine immigration of people who have something to offer the UK. There are effective and available routes in for such people, even after Shabana's proposed reforms they will still exist.

Nobody is against offering sanctuary to genuinely oppressed people, most recent example being the Ukrainians.

But equally nobody sane is in favour of immigrants who have no skills or ability to work legally and support the UK at some level, nor those who falsify their legal or illegal entry to take advantage of our welfare system.

Immigration is not a single problem, despite what many politicians seem to think. It is far more complicated that that.

[Snooky]

But equally nobody sane is in favour of immigrants who have no skills or ability to work legally and support the UK at some level, nor those who falsify their legal or illegal entry to take advantage of our welfare system.

Illegal immigrants are deported once any asylum bid is exhausted. Those granted asylum can legally work in the UK; if the asylum process takes too long, costing the UK more than it really should, that's an entirely different matter. The number of "boat people" is generally agreed to be an adverse effect of Brexit (yet bizarrely many people angry at this are eagerly lining up to vote for the charlatan primarily responsible for that happening).

So, what stats can you share showing that any more than a very small proportion of those granted asylum don't have skills or abilities we need, don't go on to work and support the UK at some level, and/or have falsified their entry?

[Snooky]

I'm going to vote for Reform at the next election. It will be a disaster in many respects if they get in, and their policies are mostly fantasy. But if they can massively cut immigration it will be a step in the right direction, and the whole thing could be the sort of wrecking ball that we need to reset politics.

This is the same attitude people had in the USA when they voted for Trump, and look how well that turned out. He promised to shake up the political system and "drain the swamp" but has basically screwed almost everything up while blatantly enriching himself, his family and pals.

As for immigration, Japan - who you mentioned in your previous post - is facing a huge problem due to their low birthrate and exodus of younger people, so they desperately need immigration. The UK is in a similar, albeit not quite as critical, position; the average age of our population increases year on year because people are living longer and we're having fewer and fewer births, so we also need immigration, assuming you still want public services and the general economy to be running successfully at the point where you're in your dotage (closer for some of us than others!).

As the son of an immigrant mother and an immigrant paternal grandparent, making me at most only 1/4 "British" by blood, I see immigration as far more beneficial and essential to our country's future well-being than a lot of other Brits.