Bear Necessities

This is an interesting question. I've always considered myself middle class (if I considered it at all) with parents who did white collar jobs, who owned a house and two cars and had a holiday aboard every summer, but had to work. Given our new circumstances, we could survive frugally, at a higher than basic level without working. I'd say fairly comfortably - but then my standards of comfort would very much NOT include a new Range Rover every three years, a detached house in the country, holiday home in the south of France, tropical holidays in the summer and skiiing in the winter and private school for the kids, grouse shooting on a weekend and golf during the week. Whereas some people would consider anything less to be slumming it! But then other people might see us putting the heating on as much as we like, going grocery shopping without ever for a moment wondering if there is enough in the current account to pay for it, or being able to buy a replacement boiler, roof or car without saving up for it, and think we live a life of extreme luxury already. But I'd never considered that might mean I have shifted to upper-class all of a sudden. Definitions are weird and nebulous. When my sister was 8 or 9 she used to go and play with a girl whose parents bought the biggest house in the village (8+ bedrooms) to use just for weekends away from London. They were good friends with Princess Diana and there would always be a brace of pheasants or rabbits hanging in the boot room and Cook would prepare them for sunday lunch . Now THEY were upper-class!

Illustration and animation and I'm freelance, so I only currently only fill out the paperwork once a year at self-assessment time. So I think I'm good, so long as I ensure that I'm above the threshold. As I understand it if I were to be so unmotivated as to drop below the threshold (which I'm not planning on) then I can pay to "top up" my contributions to get my stamp for the year, but I may have misunderstood that (as thankfully it's never happened before!) I will look into it to ensure that I don't accidentally end up with gaps in my NI record, as I intend to collect the full pension (at 70, 72, 75? who knows?!) if possible and I've not missed a year yet!)

Yeah, I'm going to make sure I keep those NI stamps topped up somehow. Good call. probably by doing a project here and there, but picking and choosing. Better to do something than stagnate.

Amen to that. We inherited 450k earlier this year (and had already paid our house off) as I'm sure I've never failed to mention at least once per thread on here. (Franky, I've still not come to terms with our new situation, and it throws everything up in the air for us) I honestly cannot be arsed to service the corporate machine any more. Have only done bits and pieces of work since then, to keep my hand in. You are right about that deep sense of waste, it definitely doesn't seem worth the effort now! I can barely be motivated to do any work right now (apart from stuff for myself) because the money/time equation is fully broken now (before this year it was just partially broken for me in that I couldnt "give up" because I had to keep going because we needed the money. But I'm 41 and time is way more valuable to me that carrying on with the drudgery (but then it's easy for me to say that now) Yes at 41 I actually feel of some use in the world which I didn't in my 20s. The kids actually rely on me at the moment, which is kind of nice in a way (if a little exhausting), even if sometimes it's just in a "dad taxi" and "helping with the maths homework" kind of a way. Still not too old for cuddles on the sofa either, which is nice. I never reached the "respected" level in my career because it broke me mentally long before I got that far. Part of going freelance and working from home in my 30s was because I couldn't handle office life any more and partly so I could spend that time with them, I've always valued family time, over working all hours for thankless bosses. Had so much of that in my 20s that I think I had some kind of breakdown on more than one occasion.

Adjusting his chair, I mean, obviously

That's a totally unrealistic photo. In real life, the guy would have one arm below the desk.

I answered your question about when it would be "full" by pointing out that only a simpleton would think that it was in any way possible to define when a country is "full" as if a country is a pint glass or a car or a forum poster full of ********. I've also made it clear that I don't think mass immigration is something that is a perfect sticking plaster for population decline, and admitted that I have no better ideas. Not sure if that makes me pro, but it sure doesn't make me blame immigrants for everything from "house prices" to "why mummy never loved me". Ah, It's ok, quoting is working fine again. All good. Enjoy shouting into the void. *wonders who invented the mute button, probably a migrant of some kind, well done them*

I'm sure you can cope with working out which bits are the replies. I even put your bits in quotation marks so that it wasn't too taxing for you. Ever since these ad updates on the forum, quote posting has been a 30/70 chance of actually working, most of the time it just freezes up or greys out the buttons. Driving me mad. and when it does work I have to refresh the page twice before it updates. So I'm blaming the website, but I'm sure you'll find some way to blame it on mass migration.

"So why can these places not cope as well as they did in the past? " Because they are massively underfunded, as a political choice, and not because "of all da immagrunts" "so immigration has had a negative impact not a positive one" Repeated studies have shown that immigration is a net benefit. But sure, whatever, you aren't going to believe facts when you can find someone else to blame. "we would not need mass immigration if we had kept our population constant like Denmark and Finland" But the point is WE CAN'T. because birth rates ARE declining. So until someone comes up with a better solution, we do need immigration. "Rubbish why could people afford two children quite comfortably in 1993 but not in 2023?" Firstly we have two kids and I've never earned more than £25k a year, and never for a minute worried about "oh no, can we afford them?" I moved somewhere 100 miles further North, and 2 to 3 times cheaper and got on with my life. There were people in 1993 that couldn't afford 2 kids and there are people now that can't. You seem to think that immigration is the sole reason for people not being able to afford two kids, which is just nonsense. Imagine blaming immigrants for someone in the uk not being able to have two kids. I mean I know people like to blame them for everything but that's just insane. Some people can't afford two kids because of massive increases in house prices and the cost of living, and perverse "incentives" that mean they have to pay most of their second wage to pay someone else to look after their kids, but then the second wage that they no longer have because they gave it to childcare, is still considered fair game for mortgage purposes, so inflates house prices. It's economic perversions that have inflated house prices and political mismanagement that has caused a cost of living crisis, which may have caused more people to not be able to afford kids (one of many reasons for a decline in numbers, not "immigrants".

No the point I am making is that we can't keep our own population stable, birth rates are decreasing. You seem to think this is because of migration, but it's not, its because of all those other factors (health. education, housing) and BECAUSE of that reduction in population (which is not solely a UK problem, but a problem for all rich nations) that is why we turned to mass immigration to fill the gaps. Import cheap labour and offshore all manufacturing (which is the same as importing cheap labour but hosting it in other countries) to ensure we can maintain the standard of living that we could only get from "growth". With a decline in native population growth becomes impossible. So given that I'm saying "mass immigration is a sticking plaster for fundamental issues that should be addressed" I don't think we are really all that different. It's just that you think that mass immigration is the cause of our declining birth rate and I think it's a symptom of our declining birthrate. Either way, the problem is far deeper than "people coming over here, stopping our women having babies" or "our women have stopped having babies let's import some people over here".

But in a functional country (which we aren't living in at the moment, clearly) then the state schools, courts, prisons, hospital capacity expands and contracts to the requirements of the population. A number of those immigrants are doctors, nurses, teachers, care workers, builders, so what should happen is the "fullness" of the country adjusts to accomodate the people it holds. If you honestly think that the issues with courts, prisons, NHS, schools and road and rail and housing capacity are first and foremost the fault of mass immigration and not the fault of successive governments' failure to fund and renew and expand and improve these things, then there is very little point in arguing with you. If it's just the old Murdoch cartoon of "That immigrant stole your biscuit" then there is very little I can say to convince you otherwise. But migrants make a very very convenient scapegoat for all the shit that governments kick down the road because it's easier to blame it on the migrants, fill your pockets and move on, than doing something about it.

That's part of the discussion. The current strategy is "kick the can down the road, keep the wheels turning by bringing in new people." Like investment schemes that only work if they can keep on bringing more and more people in at the bottom level to keep it going. Yes, eventually the wheels fall off. So what's the real solution? f**ked if I know, I'm not an economist or a politician. All I know is that "blame the latest people at the bottom of the machine" isn't a solution, it's a way of avoiding dealing with the real problem. "Where there is a ying there is also a yang. Yes people are living longer but they are also living to an older age before they get the chronic health conditions. The people who got ill in their 50's and 60's died before they got to 70 or 80 those getting ill in their 70's or 80's are still healthy in their 50's and 60's. The age of ill and old has moved on. " But specifically there is a glut of people, the baby boomers, which is a larger group. And they are the ones getting ill for a longer period and dying later, but that means they need care for longer, and there are more of them, because it was an especially large cohort. "the reduction in the number of offspring is due to mass immigration putting up the price of the roof over the head" Nope. That's not the main reason for a fall in population. There are many factors such as a reduction in childhood illness meaning you don't have to pop out as many sprogs to be sure of them surviving, women being able to have careers and go out and work and then maybe delaying having a family or realising that they don't have to have kids if they don't want to (which is a good thing, I'm not suggesting otherwise), availability of abortion, birth control, better education. It's been happening for decades, all over the rich first-world countries and has very little correlation with how many immigrants each country has. I'm sure economic factors pay their part too, obviously, but mass immigration isn't the reason for house prices being high. There are a 101 economic reasons - from lack of house building, to low-interest rates, to the rise of BTL to wealth inequality allowing some people to have 5 homes while others have none, to tax structures that reward property hoarding. All those things rank far higher than immigration. "How many recent older immigrants (due to what is called chain immigration where people come here and then get their elder parents over) are having their arses wiped in care homes? " Depends on how recent. If they arrived in the last 5 years then not many of them if they don't have settled status.

I mean "covert" in the sense that they have to welcome people with open arms on one hand (to fill the jobs) while at the same time making a big show of saying "yuck, send these filthy migrants home (or uganda or somewhere) now" with the other so as to keep the wheels turning whilst appeasing their racist base.

If those countries have kept their populations stable at 5 million (without immigration) then they don't have a problem do they, because if the population is stable then there are enough native people to replace the dying ones at a rate of 1 to 1. So there are enough people to take on these roles. The whole argument here is that a reduction in native population (because of reproduction being lower than the required replacement rate) is the reason why politicians of all stripes in the UK have looked to immigration to fill the gaps (and what that does for the dynamics of the countries that we "poach" them from I don't know). I never said it was a sustainable thing. But the idea that we can close the borders and things will be fine, doesn't tie in with the low birth rate (Japan are massively struggling with this too as they have a very low birth rate and live longer and longer, and are generally even less keen on foreigners moving in. Their government seems to be going for "robots will save us", we seem to be going for "people from poor places will save us, but let's pretend we are sending them back". I'm not saying either system is going to work, but it's still a problem to be addressed. To try to answer your question about when is the UK full, I've no idea when the UK is "full" because there is no such thing as "full". Only something like 10% of land in the UK is built on. I can't say "when we dont grow enough food to feed everyone" because we've never been self-sustaining at food production. I can't say "when all the houses are full" because we don't build enough and the ones we do have are not evenly shared between the population. So it's an impossible thing to define.

If you were talking about "net immigration" rather than "immigration", it might be best to use the right terms so we know what point you are trying to make? Sorry, you forgot the word "net". Embarrassing for you. Especially as it's one of the ones you can spell without assistance. Yeah, I'm sorry "it's was" entirely obvious.

Because the population is aging. That massive glut of people born just after the war and in their working prime in the 1970s are now all heading towards ill health and nursing home age. That's the problem. In the 70s there were enough people in that cohort to care for the older generation (many of whom didn't make it to a ripe old age due to smoking and poorer outcomes from illnesses) Now people are living longer, and living with chronic conditions longer, and it's that huge boomer group that is reaching that stage but without enough of their own children to look after them. And it's true of most of the west. A glut of people followed by, for various reasons a reduction in the number of offspring. That's why the country has relied on cheap immigration because it plugs the gaps in our own population. Fills the care and low pay vacancies (wiping arses and wiping floors) that we don't have enough prime-age people to fill. Successive governement have had to do this to keep the wheels turning. The difference is the Labour government didn't pretend otherwise, it was clear that they were recruiting for care homes and hospitals from the rest of the world. The Tories have to do it more covertly, so championing Brexit to "get the foreigners out" but then quietly recruiting from the rest of the world, outside of the EU to plug the gaps (so ironically those who voted Brexit to get rid of the brown people, end up with more brown people (or at least more non-EU and non-Europeans) Do these people honestly think that the native population of the uk is going to clamour to work in care homes and the like in sufficient numbers? Or are they just hoping that they will be that lucky small percentage of boomers on perpetual cruises with no ill health until they drop dead at 90 without needing a brown person to spoon feed them liquidised roast dinners?

I do wonder who they think is going to do all the heavy lifting (of them, out of bed) and wiping their arse for them when (and it's not going to be many years now) they are in their care homes, if not a lot of immigrants. Given their huge cohort and the fact there aren't the numbers or desire of the native population to take on all those care jobs.

@petetong Really looks like you can't read what you wrote. You said "prior Blair in 1997 immigration was never higher than approx. 50K a year" you made no mention of NET immigration which obviously isn't the same thing. You said "immigration" was never higher than approx 50k, the graph proves that immigration was four times higher than that from the 60s onwards. If you are going to argue a point at least remember to make the correct point in the first place. (If you'd been talking net immigration then you would have been correct.) Well done, have a biscuit, assuming that the powers that be haven't taken all your biscuits and then blamed it on immigrants.

@petetong 5 seconds of googling will find you a graph that shows that immigration to the uk in the 1970s and 1980s was around 200k a year and during the pre-blair part of the 90s it had risen to 300k. So not sure where you are pulling your "never higher than 50k a year" figure out of.

@PeanutButter To the same level as my own. Plus for the state pension she gets pension credits (or however they word it)towards her pension for each year that the kids are under 16 (might be 18 these days I'm not sure) as she gets the child benefit.

It was actually cheaper/easier for my wife not to work and to stay at home and look after our two kids instead. By the time we factored in childcare, wrap-around care and travel it just made no sense for her to work, for very little extra net household income and she got to spend a lot more quality time with them.

I have about 4% or 5% in it, but then I did buy it back in 2013 and have left it alone since then

In response to the query "what is to stop another crypto taking over from bitcoin?" The answer is nothing. But I would say not taking into account any of the technical aspects of why or why not it is the "king" - bitcoin has brand recognition, in the same way that Google became a verb. A lot of people use crypto and bitcoin interchangably in conversation. And ask anyone who doesn't have any crypto at all, or who has barely heard of it, to name a Crypto currency and 99.9% of them will say Bitcoin if they know one at all. And yes I'm old enough to remember when Alta Vista was king, but we never had a point at which anyone said "I'm going to Altavista that", although I do remember a time more recently when Microsoft insisted that people were going to "Bing it". They couldn't make it a verb however hard they tried.

@PrincessNutNut Appologies I actually misread my own quote. I thought Nationwide were going for the "lack of transactions is distorting things" but you are right that's not what they are saying, and "lack of houses for sale" just seems like a lie because it's clear from Rightmove that there is a huge amount on the market right now and just sitting there

I did wonder whether the country would be in such a dire state by the time the tories finally f**k off and given that western economies generally seem to be in financial trouble, that we might see UBI being brought in sooner as a last-ditch "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" type measure. "We're screwed anyway, so might as well give this a try because it can't be any worse" type thing. Or as a "sweep away the old stuff bring in something new" But I think that's just a fantasy on my part given that I don't believe it is on Labour's agenda. If they haven't turned the ship around by Term 2 though, maybe its something they might look at, especailly if they think they might need to team up with other parties to secure a second term (given that they would be unlikely to turn the ship around fully in Term 1 and people might be getting sick of the glacial timescale of change.) It's all about how you sell it to the population. I don't think you have to try very hard to sell UBI to the left, but it feels like it could be sold to the right as "look we are sweeping away a load of these benefits and bureaucracy away, and having less government interference" and appealing to the "why do they get help and we don't?" mentality. The same way as selling Left(ish) wing environmental policies to the right by saying "look, forget the hippy stuff - massively increasing wind and solar gives us energy independence from russia and the middle east"