This is a question for the government to answer. They have the power.
But no doubt they will blame someone else.

and we have a labour shortage dont forget.

I wasn't aware that the criminal underworld was included in our labour shortage but I suppose everyone is entitled to work.

On top of this they will have been advised to go for a lump sum that won't affect their benefits.

Having an ID or a DBS check will mean nothing to the do-gooders i'm afraid.

You forget there are legal immigrants who play by the rules waiting to come to this country wondering why they bothered playing by the rules.

When Sunak was asked at PMQ yesterday by Starmer what the government had done to stop the boat people he said they had stopped the free movement of people when the U.K. left the EU which of course has nothing to do with the boat people. Starmer should have fired straight back and said that stopping the free movement of people was the legal movement of the people between EU countries when we were in the EU.
Sometimes I feel Starmer is not a credible opposition leader, a bit like a wet blanket.

thing with starmer is what actually would he do in the present situation. there will be many of his MP that would go to dover and hand out frortnum and mason hampers to every single one of them along with a welcome to the uk package giving em all the information they will need to bleed the system dry. he actually has a harder task than sunak and it will show if they win the next election.

I don’t want Labour to win the next election, let the Tories sort their mess out, no one could predict covid or the Ukraine war, it has provided a smokescreen for the Tories. Up until those events things weren’t going very well anyway, gas prices were already on the increase before the Ukraine war and have now dropped back on the wholesale market.

So are you going to vote tory??

After Corbyn’s rout, Starmer was dragged in to be the presentable, sensible face of Labour as an obedient phalanx of suits sat obediently behind him on the benches, the man of steel and discipline who had revitalised the Party….. or that’s what it says on their script.
Truth is, I want to hear what his policies are and there are none, just criticism as a reflex to the Tories.
You don’t win elections like that, you have to have a vision to sell that leads us to a better tomorrow. Where is it ?…….

All over the news today is speculation that interest rates will rise to a level last seen in 2008, when Labour where last in power. They couldn't do anything to reduce rates then so why would anybody see them as an alternative. We are faced with a choice of who is best in a choice of failures.
Meanwhile..........................

Just read Ian Kershaw’s book ‘Personality and Power’ , a cracking read about politics in the 20th Century. One interesting quote I came across was from WW1 where Hitler’s Unterfeldwebel (Sergeant) described him as….’ ….he has the characteristics of a completely intolerable fault finder, know all and grumbler with an intolerance of opposing views’…wonder if he was a season ticket holder before world domination turned his head.

whether you liked em or not corbyn did have policies that hardly got a mention in the papers. afraid nowadays elections are won and lost on the personality of the leaders rather than any policies party,s can come up with. what a choice we,ll have. rishy or starmer.

know wh i,ll be voting for and it will be the one who will reverse this green nonesence and sort out the dinghy diver problem once and for all. suppose i,ll be abstaining though.

My conscience would not allow me to me to, I would rather chop my hands off, I will never forget how Thatcher destroyed industry, privatised utilities and sold of our North Sea interests.

No won or lost on whatever ever media outlets backs a party, currently we have a far right media.

Policies don’t differ very much, they just have different ways of removing money from your pockets, swings and roundabouts.
In my working life I never felt better off or worse off no matter what party was in power.

Seriously…? Is this a wind up….? We have a smug woke liberal/eft media who inhabit a different world from normal people.

There's nothing far right about the BBC and newspapers like the Mirror and Guardian have plenty of readers. Then there's the Socialist Worker. I'm assuming those papers still lean leftwards as I don't buy newspapers and catching me reading one is as rare as hen's teeth. I used to browse whatever newspapers the local barber provided but since covid the wife cuts my golden locks (well silver actually) and she does a better job.

In my working life working on sites for over 50 years in the U.K. only 1 fella I knew bought the Guardian, the majority bought The Sun or The Star, I didn’t see many Express, Mirrors or Mails either.

Let’s be honest no matter who is in power a lots depends on how the civil service operates within the government, we elect the government but the civil servants stay the same.

You've been telling us you were a globe trotter Jamie and have lived and worked in many countries and now you say you worked for over fifty years in the UK as well. Jesus how old are you??
You must have worked with a right set of thickos all buying the same papers and the Sun and Star at that.
You know what they said about Sun readers "they don't give a fluk who runs the country as long as she's got big tits"

You don’t win elections like that, you have to have a vision to sell that leads us to a better tomorrow. Where is it ?…….[/quote]
whether you liked em or not corbyn did have policies that hardly got a mention in the papers. afraid nowadays elections are won and lost on the personality of the leaders rather than any policies party,s can come up with. what a choice we,ll have. rishy or starmer.[/quote]

No won or lost on whatever ever media outlets backs a party, currently we have a far right media.[/quote]

There's nothing far right about the BBC and newspapers like the Mirror and Guardian have plenty of readers. Then there's the Socialist Worker. I'm assuming those papers still lean leftwards as I don't buy newspapers and catching me reading one is as rare as hen's teeth. I used to browse whatever newspapers the local barber provided but since covid the wife cuts my golden locks (well silver actually) and she does a better job. [/quote]

In my working life working on sites for over 50 years in the U.K. only 1 fella I knew bought the Guardian, the majority bought The Sun or The Star, I didn’t see many Express, Mirrors or Mails either.[/quote]

You've been telling us you were a globe trotter Jamie and have lived and worked in many countries and now you say you worked for over fifty years in the UK as well. Jesus how old are you??
You must have worked with a right set of thickos all buying the same papers and the Sun and Star at that.
You know what they said about Sun readers "they don't give a fluk who runs the country as long as she's got big tits" [/quote]

Ok I will rephrase my post, I worked the majority of my career 45 years not 50 I just rounded it up in the U.K., prior to my retirement I had a few years working abroad, around 6 years. I was fortunate to be able to holiday abroad albeit I made a point of having a break in between projects.
The people t worked with were certainly no thickos, at the start of the working day the first stop was the paper shop. I don’t believe there are many countries round the world follow this routine.
What a tight sod only reading the newspapers when you went for a haircut, it must have cost you a fortune in haircuts to keep up with the news, only jokin’

Would describe a few on here, tbd. lol

There are more ways of knowing what goes on other than reading newspapers but when it comes to funding them I am an extremely tight sod and I'm not joking.

There might be nowadays but in my working days there was no internet, there were only newspapers and the news on the BBC and the ITV to keep up with what was happening on the planet.
What I refuse to do is subscribe to any of the subscription TV services more so SKY as they have ruined football.

I don't subscribe to them either. The Prem has enough money.

What about a toffee apple from Bretts...........coconut or no coconut?

Definitely non coconut, but our Great Uncle Jimmy who turned up Saturday tea time with them always bought them with coconut…..a messy business.

think thats the situation for the majority of people. its just they feel more comfortable with a certain party in power than the other. you hear from working class tory voters that what has labour ever done for me and the opposite from labour voters who class all tories as posh money bags.

This Labour Party is a middle class bunch of wannabe’s patronising the working class,their loyalties are more in tune with middle class concerns as for example their commitment to the green agenda which is going to make life difficult for working class people.

thats the reason i have never bothered with sky. its not just football but they ruined rugby league with their constant reference to the video referee. used to watch RL in the summer till sky got involved but after suffering one game that dragged on for what seemed ever i never went back again. know back pre internet days the news we got via television was more just news and far less discussions about it.

this all started in 1997 with new labour. what their priorities were didn,t match their supporters ones. even the national minimum wage which his supporters constantly harp on about became the national maximum wage in many parts of the country with high unemployment. think the word New showed us what they were all about.

The new Sizewell Nuclear Power Station is now under review, this project would have provided thousands of jobs and in this day and age of energy shortages is sorely needed. It was going to be built by EDF who are now wholly owned by the French government with the U.K. throwing a lump,sum in.EDF are also involved with Hinckley Point, they went ahead with it after the government promised EDF a premium rate for the electricity it will produce.
What don’t the government look at cancelling their vanity HS2 project instead some thing we don’t really require ?

They are putting it out that the northern rail link improvement (Liverpool-Hull) is going to be cancelled/delayed/scaled back. Will projects in the south be cancelled/delayed/scaled back.

do not know but its just a guess. unless its a link to london o can imagine the rest of the southern rail network will be as poor as in the north of england. try going anywhere east to west in this country you,ll have a problem and not everyone wants to go just to london. removing things from london is the way forward. not being well travelled abroad do other countries have everything centralised in their capital cities.

My view is that all these infrastructure projects are to suck money and influence into London not the other way like HS2 from Birmingham.

Keir has his say..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63526167

We are told HS2 will knock 19 minutes of the journey from London to Birmingham…the cynic in me says move the timetable departure 19 minutes earlier. Hey Presto, money saved.
That said, is it worth all that money for such a trifling return.

The advocates of the project says HS2 is all about building new capacity but intercity journeys especially business are down by 25% since covid with little prospects of recovery as the more enlightened employers (and employees) realise the job can be done without people having to hurtle around the country.
The problem is too much has been done to turn back now.

Should we start a crowdfunding to buy some more 2 car sets to add to the existing 2 car sets on the Newcastle to Middlesbrough line?

be better to knock 19 quid off the cost of the journey. takes longer to get to hartlepool by train from west yorkshire than it did 60 years ago but with a prohibited cost going with it.