kwlf wrote:
There is good evidence that immigrants and refugees are healthier than the general population.
You’ve never been to a central London hospital then, I take it.
Timothy wrote:
The world in which Syria is mass killing its own citizens did not exist in previous times.
I don’t know… at earlier times it was the war in Lebanon, which also wiped out a thriving country, it was the Tamil Tiger Conflict in Sri Lanka and whatever not. There are always conflicts which will produce displaced people and such threatened for their lifes. And those do need our full support and help, no question.
Whether people who come here for purely economical reasons should be qualified the same is what I question. I think it is quite a slap in the face of people really needing refuge and help if those who leave a poor but safe environment for economic improvement are treated like themselfs or, worse, the other way around.
“The NHS would collapse due to staffing shortages without immigration.”
Isn’t that basically because it is easier to live off social security than to take a job on the national minimum wage?
I’m not sure I follow you there. In our hospital I suppose almost our entire cleaning staff is Polish and these jobs are minimum wage, but none of our surgeons are British born and about half the medical consultants are from overseas. A lot of the younger nurses are from Portugal and the older ones are from India or Mauritius. These are all skilled jobs that Britain can’t fill due to poor workforce planning and poor conditions – the proportion of my former colleagues who have moved to Australasia is astounding.
Healthwise, most immigrants are young – this factor alone is going to generally improve the ratio of working people to sick people. They are more prone to mental illness. But most of the NHS’s resources go to reasonably healthy older people who collect chronic conditions, and spend ever increasing amounts of their lives having this or that sorted. I have 35 people on my list today, and only 2 of them are under 65 and most will be over 80.
I’m not sure I follow you there
The UK has seen a trend, over many years, where learning “manual skills” has been seen as unfashionable.
This happened at various levels. Companies discontinued apprenticeships, which became seen as a route for stupid people (which to be non-PC is not wholly inaccurate; if you have a PhD in quantum physics you won’t be doing plumbing). Manual careers became unfashionable when every kid wanted to be a banker. Minimum wage regulations killed jobs for the young (the brilliant holiday jobs for a 15 year old in some local electronics company on 50p/hr etc disappeared). 40 years ago it even became hard to get girls if you told them you were an “engineer”; friends used to say “unemployed” and were more successful 
See the Engineer Dilbert cartoon here – it is very accurate. This trend also happened in other European countries but not as strongly as in the UK.
And now, several decades later we are paying the price, with few people interested in manual jobs and few kids going into manual skills like plumbing, electrics, decorating, etc. Nearly all Brits operating in these areas are bodgers and conmen. The good ones are mostly Polish – these people got a good education in these skills back home.
So formal job training largely dried up.
The generous social security system has finished the job off nicely.
The service sector (including the NHS) is accordingly heavily staffed with people who arrived in the UK fairly recently and who want to work. The non EU arrivals also can’t get a lot of the benefits.
most immigrants are young
They nearly always are.
You don’t get the benefit otherwise, because getting integrated in the new country takes many years. And the illegal travel routes used today are not for less agile people. Well, Czechs had to integrate because there were not enough to form a community which allows you to exist without interacting with the locals. And I believe people should integrate when they do this. The alternative is seen in certain countries in Europe when things which were swept under the carpet for decades boil over. My parents were about 40-50 when we came over and they never saw the benefits. Only their kids did. Also certain countries make it much harder to integrate than others, and this doesn’t necessarily relate to how many immigrants they take in of the current wave.
I have 35 people on my list today, and only 2 of them are under 65 and most will be over 80.
That’s probably a result of those generations regarding health as irrelevant, doing zero exercise, and eating stodge.
Again not quite sure what you mean there. Overall it’s a success story that people are living long enough to have so many things wrong with them. Sometimes we overdo things when it comes to keeping the very frail alive for longer than is humane, but a lot of these people are in very good health. We will have done 2 elective hip replacements for 94 year olds this year. One of them is still working.
“The UK has seen a trend, over many years, where learning “manual skills” has been seen as unfashionable.”
As a 12 year old, I did one term in the village school which had no progression to certificates. Cooking, Wood and Metalwork, Navigation, Knot Tying and Net Mending, as well as Maths, Science, and English. After basic wood tool practice, I did the tech drawing for a chisel rack, then made it. Good quality wood was used by those continuing longer.
I then transferred to a High School, where the first term was a repeat of the Maths and Science, but Latin and French replaced the practical subjects. The English texts were much less interesting to me.
Now all kids do a Common Course for at least 2 years. At the end of two years, they took home a small, open-top box, with no cut jointing, and the five pieces of wood held together with panel pins.
At least two of the boys I left behind when I moved to the selective school have done better than those of us who progressed to University and didn’t drop out.
PS selection was by IQ test, not parent choice.
I deal with a large number of business. Any young person who is intelligent, wanted to make a lot of money, without too much stress that might follow from a career in Law, medicine or other very competitive and potentially lucrative profession, I would recommend to establish their own business in one of the key trades. While there are plenty who have done so who possess the essential trade skills, there are few that have the ability to encompass the wider skills of running a large business – those that can combine both will inevitably be very successful, and enjoy a good life, without the stress that combines with more demanding professions.
Hi,
I’m finally give it up.
Good bye to everyone.
Peter can you please delete my user.
Markus
:-(
UK, too, or just Aviation?
