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It was called out as conspiracy theory bullshit in this thread at very short notice. Better fact checking than most places here... including the BBC. Crazy times.
EDIT: credit where credit is due... ernielynch was straight in there with the debunking first.
On AI... this government has got very excited about how it can help clear some admin backlogs... well done them where that's been shown to work... but also seem to be super keen to jump in with the very USA companies that are over hyping more general LLM models and are trying to put their hands on the scales in their own favour when it comes to UK energy use and data & IP protection.
Ive got a techbro-crypto****er* mate and he reckons the amount of money goin into anything AI related that gets listed is gobbled up before anyone even knows what it is, BUT hes absolutely adamant that its going to have a huge impact and we are all unprepared for the change thats coming
The Ai investment bubble will likely burst this time around.
Valuations are significantly more stupid than the dotcom job.
Thank god for all our political parties, they'll know what's best for us in how to tackle this issue.
Has everyone voted in the deputy leadership election then? 😃
Has everyone voted in the deputy leadership election then?
No became a green member a few weeks ago and voted for someone who gives a toss. But my Labour membership was on the fire a few years ago now anyway.
Tsk!
All I've got from AI so far is more bells and whistles on the editing software that barely improve a thing.
My partner's a teacher and she says all the kids are all cheating so they've had to use AI detectors to seek them out and the staff are also using AI to respond to emails. The results are painfully embarrassing.
Instagram is polluted with even more shit.
But someone's getting rich.
Also on getting NHS appointments as per above - fill in online form on Monday ..... Friday they get back to you asking what your symptoms are and whether you've tried to resolve it.
Then you can have an appointment.
Pathetic.
What a time to be alive.
Has everyone voted in the deputy leadership election then? 😃
No, I withdrew from my Union's political fund so I no longer have a vote. No great loss with this current shower.
Great link. And our government is right behind the USA one in giving Altman and others a regulation free zone to make their billions off of other people’s work.
No, I haven’t voted, as my membership has lapsed since the election, and I’m in no mood to send more money their way right now. Also, it’s a done deal isn’t it? The rules were set to make it all very boring.
It's almost as if Nigel Farage is already Prime Minister
When questioned about Houbi’s case during a recent BBC interview, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said: “It’s important to understand that we are actually dependent on Israeli permissions to bring those people out, and that has not been easy to get.”
But Israeli officials said they had not blocked Houbi leaving Gaza.
Since when has the apartheid regime been reluctant to allow Palestinians to leave illegally Occupied Palestine? All the overwhelming evidence is that they want them to do precisely that, especially in Gaza. Perhaps the Labour deputy Prime Minister is worried that the Israeli regime won't allow them to return home?
Houbi and her family are now living in a tent in Khan Younis, after their home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes early in the war.
So Manar al-Houbi’s family would have all their living costs and housing paid for without the UK government needing to, plus it would get them out of a dire humanitarian crisis, but this so-called Labour government refuses to allow them into the UK.
I think Sir Keir Starmer might be right about something after all...... there's no need to vote Reform just vote Labour.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/migrant-learn-english-to-a-level-standard-5HjdFLZ_2/
According to our so-called Labour Home Secretary :
“It is unacceptable for migrants to come here without learning our language, unable to contribute to our national life.
If you come to this country, you must learn our language and play your part.”
Apparently according to Shabana Mahmood migrants have not been playing their part and contributing to our national life, so to correct that they are now expected to learn English to A Level standard, which is a standard higher than the majority of the UK population can manage.
Including I dare say the Reform voters that Labour and Keir Starmer, the poundland Nigel Farage, are trying to entice.
God I hate this right-wing government. And Shabana Mahmood really is as bad as Home Secretary as Priti Patel and Suella Braverman were.
Someone remind me what the point of Labour was?
Inflated optimism I say, me Chancellor. Question is where does the growth come from?
The Chancellor has predicted UK to be the 2nd fastest growing in advanced economies in the coming year.
As I said previously, the Govt would be grinning from ear to ear if UK could achieve the predicted 1.4% growth this year (Currently at 1.3% max)
The latest prediction is that UK might only be able to achieve 0.7% growth in 2026 in line with Euro Zone (also 0.7%). Growth is expected to slow down in 2026 in most of the major economies.
I guess we will only find out next year, and if the target of 1.4% cannot be achieved, I guess the Chancellor will have to revise the number again.
The Chancellor has predicted UK to be the 2nd fastest growing in advanced economies in the coming year.
No she did not, the article you linked states the IMF have predicted the UK will be the 2nd fastest growing member of the G7. Which notably excludes China and India. It's also a prediction, from a third party, and not a government target in itself.
The government will likely have a growth target, but I'm not aware they've actually published and official number. Happy to be corrected if they have published something, and not a snippet taken in random conversations with journos.
The IMF also assume they're not being misled by the data provided to their country offices which forms a large chunk of their predictions, so there's that too.
expected to learn English to A Level standard, which is a standard higher than the majority of the UK population can manage.
It’s really weird but as a kid I’d have loved to do an English A level but we only had the o-level available (Brizzle 80’s inner city school). I had to do English lit and that just didn’t work out 🙂
It would be funny if other countries decided that you need an an academic level of language to retire.
I get it’s work but tbh if you can’t talk the language the type of work you’re going to get is going to be pretty limited and unlikely to get employers desperate to sponsor you.
I get its for the daily mail readers afraid of the foreign voices they hear on the bus, but strangely even if you can speak the language you’ll probably use your native language to people who also native speakers of it.
I work in (Healthcare) a part of town that has a high ****stani population. We have an over representation in the patients who have no English but have lived here for decades - similar to the English in Spain. They watch Urdu telly, they read Urdu newspapers. It's mostly women, but not confined to just them. I regularly see women relying on their husbands or other male family members for translation. I've seen those same men contemptuously screw up printed 'scripts and throw them on the floor of the waiting room.
Requiring English makes those folks just a little less vulnerable.
What does that actually mean? As far as I’m aware English A level is about literature, not anything to do with communicating with your neighbours. Or are we expecting migrants to have a view on Pride and Prejudice?
Has Suella Mahmood announced how this is to be enforced? Will there be a written test on arrival? Coursework? Perhaps a quick quiz on the flight over? Or will this insular and backwards policy simply reply on someone getting a certificate from somewhere which says they have A-Level English equivalent?
It's also faintly ironic given how appalling the general standard of English written and spoken by your typical Reform voter. Will they be tested too before they get their benefits? Obviously using a comma for an apostrophe is an instant fail, as is a double space, not capitalising proper nouns, capitalising other words, not using full stops, and finishing every single message with an x.
Do we still have the Rwanda agreement, because that's reserved for anyone who delivers a long string of misspelled thoughts separated only by ellipses.
Someone remind me what the point of Labour was?
Supporting people who work - i.e. not immigrants who come here to take jobs and suppress wages. Also not benefit claimants, because they also take from people who work and make society as a whole poorer. Shame some of the Labour back benchers can't see that.
As the overall A-level pass rate is 97.3% I don't think the test is going to be that hard. We can all have a go when samples go online in January. It'll no doubt be as relevant as the current cultural test which we found was mainly history trivia when STWers tried it. When you meet migrants in future expect them to use "whom" where most people don't know they should and the subjunctive that most people don't know exists.
This reminds me of a sour-grapes book by an American who had failed the French civil service exam for working in universities etc., "agrégation", because the level of French required is beyond even most French university-educated people. The author argued that it was France that was suffering because it was excluding foreigners that would do a better job than French nationals. Can't be that hard though, Madame got it.
On the other hand the level of French needed to get French nationality is very modest.
Supporting people who work - i.e. not immigrants who come here to take jobs and suppress wages.
Now consider all the immigrants "who come here" and create jobs with good wage levels.
Migrants make up 8% of the population and generate 10% of GDP.
https://www.davidsonmorris.com/immigrants-economic-contributions/
As far as I’m aware English A level is about literature, not anything to do with communicating with your neighbours.
There are English Language A Levels in the 21st Century.
On other points… language requirements can make it hard for people to bring relatives that need care over to be with them… while other immigration changes made in the last ten years mean that going abroad to help care for relatives could lose you your right to come back to work. A nasty catch 22 situation.
As for benefits and workers… it’s worth looking at how many worker receive benefits. Especially true for people who need benefits to be in or get to work.
We have an over representation in the patients who have no English
That is not what our right-wing anti-immigrant Home Secretary is talking about. She is not talking about immigrants not speaking English, there already exists a requirement for migrants to speak English.
What Mahmood is saying in an attempt to out-farage Nigel Farage is that the standard of English that immigrants coming over here speak isn't high enough. She wants them to be able to speak and understand "complex English grammar".
Read the link, even I, foreign born and who only managed Grade2 CSE English at school understood what she is saying.
Do the patients at your surgery really need to speak and understand "complex English grammar"?
More stuff here direct from the government in easy-to-understand English and without too many big words :
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/migrants-will-be-required-to-pass-a-level-standard-of-english
Btw is "we have an over representation in the patients" correct? I wouldn't claim to be a grammar expert but it sounds like pisspoor English to me 🧐
When you meet migrants in future expect them to use "whom" where most people don't know they should and the subjunctive that most people don't know exists.
They are going to come over here taking our jobs and our women AND telling us how to speak our own language ffs.
I blame Labour.
As the overall A-level pass rate is 97.3% I don't think the test is going to be that hard.
Yes, that's the pass rate after two years of study.
Two years of studying a language which you have spent talking every day for fifteen plus years?
It's also self selecting... you choose your A levels... your average Brit would go no where near that course or exam. Taking it up already suggests an aptitude of some kind (not to mention requirements to have gained particular grades at lower level exams). The pass rate for A Level physics is probably above 90%. Most people wouldn't pass A Level physics after 2 years of study. I suspect the pass rate would be very, very low if you asked members of the general public to take the papers.
And for a part of those taking the A-level two years of hanging around smoking dope and doing **** all. 🙂 That and the % to suggest that an A-level pass is pretty worthless and doesn't say a lot about ability is an obtuse way of saying I don't think it's going to be much of a barrier to anyone motivated.
I spent 12 years of my life teaching English as a foreign language. IME if people need a language, are motivated and bright enough to hold down a job they very quickly learn. The house I'm sitting in was mainly paid for when an American oil company decided that all its foreign workers had to pass the TOEFL test. I was initially approached to be sent out to bases to teach, places like Angola, lovely. So I declined and suggested sending workers to us in France for week or two week residential courses. They agreed.
The workers generally had few formal qualifications, they'd got into the oil industry after working on (for example) fishing boats and worked their way up from the drill floor. But they were hard working, determined and their jobs depended on it. They did the courses, worked in their spare time and passed.
As Kelvin says it's more likely to be a barrier to dependants, which is I suspect the intention.
regularly see women relying on their husbands or other male family members for translation. I've seen those same men contemptuously screw up printed 'scripts and throw them on the floor of the waiting room
my mum was a maternity nurse for many years in Luton also with similar demographics
she says that often the minute the male relatives were sent home the expectant/new mothers started speaking English, but couldn't let their husbands/fathers know they spoke it
all having to take that exam might change that
which is I suspect the intention.
Cut to the chase, it is very obvious what the intention is. It's to create headlines and as my link says:
These measures are seen as a way for Labour to combat Reform UK's rise in the polls
Nigel Farage is now setting the agenda in UK politics and for all intents and purposes dictating Labour Party policy on issues such as immigration and asylum seekers.
When you have so little to offer it is just easier to agree with Nigel Farage that immigrants and asylum seekers are the problem.
the expectant/new mothers started speaking English, but couldn't let their husbands/fathers know they spoke it
Their husbands and fathers didn't know that they could speak English? Wow. But won't forcing them to pass A-level English get them into trouble with their husbands and fathers?
Nigel Farage is now setting the agenda in UK politics and for all intents and purposes dictating Labour Party policy on issues such as immigration and asylum seekers.
Indeed. It's the weird double header of "they shouldn't be here if they're not working" and "stop them working here, taking our jobs"... see the post Jamz put on this page. It all comes down to politicians chasing after the "get rid of the immigrants" voters. There's millions of them out there, and the two old parties are both terrified that the "party previously know as the Brexit Party" has the means and methods to attract those millions of voters. Maybe not the 17 million plus people who voted for Brexit, but they only need half that to have a good chance of getting the most votes at the next general election. And then there's the risk that we get Brexit part two, and more economic and social damage. So easy to see the fear in nearly every announcement this government makes. Yes, they are running scared of Farage. But their weird combination of giving the public some of what he is offering while simultaneously condemning him for going too far isn't going to work, in my opinion. It's only going to make him look more acceptable, and make people less wary towards him IMHO.
my mum was a maternity nurse for many years in Luton also with similar demographics
she says that often the minute the male relatives were sent home the expectant/new mothers started speaking English, but couldn't let their husbands/fathers know they spoke it
My mum was a midwife, then a health visitor and told me the exact same thing.
I have no problem setting tough criteria for migrants as after all they want to come to UK for whatever reason so they need to do whatever is required in same was as I can't just choose a country to live in and go and live there with no criteria to meet, paperwork to get approved etc,.
However, putting in that tough criteria will backfire as we all know we need a lot of migrants to enable the country to run and some far fetched BS about UK people doing all the jobs instead will soon get found out.
Could we potentially deport Boris Johnson for his constant use of Latin?
I assume there will be an option of Welsh or Scots Gaelic for those immigrants wishing to relocate to the devolved nations?
Looks like Reeves has just confirmed we're all going to be taxed more to fill 'the hole' created by the OBR changing it's forecast methodology. Obviously she doesn't think the Labour poll rating is low enough yet. She must be aiming for single figures. ####ing clueless!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/15/rachel-reeves-brexit-impact-tax-and-spending-budget
"Reeves confirmed the OBR had “consistently overestimated” the UK’s productivity and the expected downgrade of its previous assumptions would probably make the chancellor’s task even harder."
So we all have to pay because the OBR screwed up. I'm sure voters up and down the country will accept that with good grace and understanding. Will they bollocks! Like me, they'll be thinking if the OBR haven't done their jobs properly maybe we should simply get rid of it?
we're all going to be taxed more
All of us? Just about the only tax rise that would result in that would be a rise in VAT. Has she suggested that? [I really hope not] Or higher taxes on the better off to support services? [don't call it redistribution]
So we all have to pay because the OBR screwed up.
No, the government has to allow for a material change in world trade and investment circumstances, and their impact on the UK in its new (self chosen) situation.
Taxing the wrong people at the wrong time just removes money from the economy.
Not what you're meant to do if you want growth.
Fools.
Spreadsheet made me do this ... What about public outcomes?
Taxing the wrong people at the wrong time just removes money from the economy.
Agreed. But taxing the better off can be part of rebalancing the economy so that it works for all... rather than just the better off.
Or higher taxes on the better off to support services?
She's cutting services. None of these extra taxes are going to be used to improve services, they're going to fill an imaginary hole in the public finances created by a downgrading of productivity in the OBRs forecast models. Which leads to the obvious question that if the OBRs forecasts can't be relied upon, what's the point of it?
Higher taxes on the better off* should absolutely be used to improve services, I think we'd all be happy to pay a bit more tax if that was what is on offer. But it's not is it?
She can #### right off.
* Those of us who are slightly better off than the national average, but not the top 1% with 10s, hundreds or thousands of millions at their disposal.
https://www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/analysis/health-care-funding
Funding in key services is increasing. Overall spending is increasing.
Those of us who are slightly better off than the national average
Whenever I hear this... it's nearly always from people on more than double the national average income, with more than double the national average held in wealth/assets.
that tough criteria will backfire as we all know we need a lot of migrants to enable the country to run
The UK certainly doesn't need a large volume of low skill, low productivity workers to do low value added jobs in the gig economy in the middle of a housing crisis. The Boriswave has proven that. Big employers and universities are ecstatic to see a huge volume of un-unionised, insecure workers and undemanding, fee paying students...but they don't care about the subsequent impact on the economy or society.
Whenever I hear this... it's nearly always from people on more than double the national average income, with more than double the national average held in wealth/assets.
I'm talking about more and more people being dragged into the 40% tax bracket. I know you probably think 50k/year is a very high salary but it really isn't. Yes, it's significantly more than the median of £31k but it includes people like social workers, teachers, nurses, electricians, plumbers etc. Historically the 40% tax bracket was applied to the 'high paid'. Are we now saying teachers and nurses are highly paid? Of course they're not, yet many will be paying 40% tax.
Most teachers and nurses do not get into the 40% tax bracket. It's true that more and more professionals are being drawn into the higher tax bracket by fiscal drag, if that's really such a concern... raise thresholds and raise rates together (I expect this government will do neither by the way). If you're only just inside the bracket, you're only paying that higher rate on a very small proportion of your earnings. If the 40% rate is having a big effect on your take home pay... you're doing much better than teachers and nurses.
"Similarly, of the 12 groups we examined in respect of annual earnings, 7 earn more than £50,000 a year on average, but again this does not include teachers."
https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/how-does-teachers-pay-compare-other-professions
raise thresholds and raise rates together
They're not doing that though are they? Thresholds have been frozen since 2021. A quick chatgpt says that if thresholds had been linked to prices and wage growth then the 40% threshold would be at about 64k. By 2028 (which is the current period they're frozen) it'll be more like 71k. You may not care if you're not near the 50k threshold but the reality is that millions of others will and Labour will pay the price at the ballot box. It's just another example of working people being screwed while the truly well-off don't have to worry too much.