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But how does the UK deport people whose asylum claims fail? Few of the origin countries (if known) will accept returns. And given the pressure on accommodation, what happens when migrants are processed and in theory those granted asylum then pay for their own accommodation. We have seen local authorities demanding central government support to put a roof over the head of destitute people.
Rough sleeping is a growing problem in several UK cities. Even the RoI, which admits much smaller numbers of migrants, has an accommodation problem. Many of the migrants arriving there originally transited through another EU country and should have been recorded on the Eurodac database at that time. However, Ireland isn't managing to use the Dublin Regulation to move people on.
Incidentally, I should have mentioned the cost of paying Rwanda, which so far is about £240 million.
Hotels are the big ticket item, although I struggled to find a cumulative figure. In 2021-22 hiring around 400 hotels cost about £1.5 billion, but that has now risen to around £8 million a day (circa £2.9 billion per annum). The cost of the Bibby Stockholm barge to the end of Dec 2023 was £22 million.
But it is quite sobering to think about what has been spent, or will shortly be spent, on international cooperation. If we take the case of France, around £319 million was spent on supporting French police activity and related measures connected to irregular migration between 2014 and 2023. The latest set of agreements will see a further £423 million allocated in the period to 2025/26.
The big losers, apart from UK tax payers, are disadvantaged people in far-away countries who were previously supported by the Overseas Development Assistance budget, of which a large chunk has now been diverted to domestic refugee and asylum seeker expenditure.
I thought of you when I checked the figures, wondering whether you might have second thoughts about your move. Actually Wirral isn't too bad - male life expectancy 77.0 and female 81.5. You are quite right about local variation. Is it worth thinking of a move to Cheshire West - male 79.4, female 83.5?
The BBC seems to be whipping up a counter-reaction by interviewing various persons who are critical of barring Abbott from standing. What price on a seat in the HoL?
I thought you asked a question. Isn't that what adding a question mark indicates? The English NW region as a whole has life expectancy of 77.3 for males and 81.3 for females. As I mentioned, the figures for Wales as a whole are 77.8 and 81.8, so life expectancy is just marginally higher than for the NW.
Liverpool does look pretty bad. Overall, England has higher life expectancy at birth than Wales, although if you compare areas within the two countries, some Welsh areas are better than some English ones.
England, 78.8 years for males and 82.8 years for females
Wales, 77.9 years for males and 81.8 years for females
Liverpool 75.3 years for males and 79.3 years for females
In any case, life expectancy would partly reflect the existing organisation of services, and Wales does still rely on English hospitals for high volumes of specialist services. In North Wales there is a lot of treatment across the border, especially tertiary care referrals. North Wales doesn't have urban centres with large enough populations to support certain specialist services, and many patients are referred to Liverpool, Manchester, Oswestry or Chester.
This report is a bit old now but sets our some of the basic factors affecting cross-border healthcare.
In recent years there have been various wrangles over funding, such as when the Countess of Chester Hospital claimed that Welsh Health Boards were not paying fully for services provided and threatened to stop taking referrals
Great effort. I agree with Alan C when he says that it is good that the old stadium is now an open community space. It would be nice to develop one of two other Swans-connected features on the site linked to the community mission. I hope they don't build houses though. I really like the idea of preserving the outline of the old ground as a green space near the city centre.
I'm not sure about this particular scheme which looks like a rabbit pulled from a hat, but I do worry about what appears to be a widespread disdain for military service and a perception that strong defences are an outdated concept. It is as though too many of us now live is this cosy liberal bubble, in which we assume we are protected by something called the international rule-based order and war in Europe is impossible. Actually, outside the bubble there are powerful authoritarian states who don't subscribe to this liberal order, and may well seek to do us harm. In many other countries a period of military service, or at least a period of training, is mandatory because governments realise that national defence is a real issue. I don't think there is anything old fashioned about that. Nor if push comes to shove will participation be optional.
There is a reason why people say Putin is influenced by the achievements of Peter the Great. Anybody who had followed events since the invasion would be aware of that.
The subtext of this lamentable post is that Putin invaded Ukraine to kill Nazis. Do the shoppers in this video of the latest war crime look like Nazis?
Момент удару по «Епіцентру» в Харкові. Начальник Слідчого управління ГУНП в Харківській області Сергій Болвінов поділився цими кадрами pic.twitter.com/fe9q3O3Gw7
Just to add a note to what somebody said earlier about Nationwide travel insurance, provided with the Flexplus account, it is worth noting that the underwriting company has changed from UK Insurance to Aviva. This means certain changes in T and Cs, including as far as I can see a relaxation of the upper age limit. On the other hand, add-ons, such as for over 70 years old and extra charges for pre-existing conditions seem to cost a little more. One downside is that if you extend your holiday length from 31 days to say 42 days, this extension only lasts for one trip rather than the whole year (i.e. your following trip is back to 31 days cover).
To my mind it is the number 1 issue at present, because it directly affects other headline issues like cost of living (in sense of making ends meet for those on low wages), NHS, affordability of housing, and inadequate investment in infrastructure.
Just as I said. HIMARS has been partially jammed but is still registering some hits, ATACMS continues to resist jamming and is doing very significant damage in Crimea and the other occupied areas. Your earlier statement that both had been jammed is untrue - as It a lot of what you post.
What a load of old cobblers. There have been recent problems with the jamming of HIMARS, but over the last two days ATACMS have been very effective with hits on air defences and a command centre.
Regarding the last few posts, I think there is a bit to both sides of the argument. Budgets have increased, especially when one considers the cost of COVID-19, but this is not keeping up with population growth. Ever since I can remember, the NHS has been pressured to achieve cost savings and efficiency gains, but I have the sense that this wears off somewhat, so that each new cohort of managers needs to find new ways to improve things. Overall, the big problem I see is that we have record spending and public debt, but falling per capita productivity and insufficient additional tax receipts from our extra population to fund the uplift needed in services and infrastructure.
I always thought it was the most likely location, but I am surprised by the suggestion that this might depend on the cricket remaining. This would probably mean a rugby stadium with only two sides close to the pitch.
Obviously Sunak has gone for the date that he thinks is most to his advantage, but probably his options were quite limited. The pollsters said that the winter and the main summer holiday period would turn voters off, leaving October or November as the likely dates. But there were also concerns that November would clash with the US Presidential election. So it probably came down to a choice between around October 10th or just before the summer holidays.
It is a poor record. However, for balance we need to consider the macro-economic picture, the contingencies that affected all European governments in recent years, and the polices that both main parties supported. One could argue that after an early period of austerity when the Tory government ran the economy on something closer to the US low-tax, low-spending approach, there was a policy change that brought us closer to the European pattern of high-tax, high-spending public finances. In FY 2023-24 total public expenditure is estimated to be £1,189 billion or 46.5% of GDP, equating to about £42.000 per household. Tax revenues were about £1,095 billion. The high spending coincided with a willingness to increase the national debt, which most European countries did in this same period. In the financial year ending March 2024 the UK Govt borrowed £121.4 billion. Total debt rose to 97.9% of annual GDP.
Policies that Labour also supported, and in some cases said should have gone further include: - Furlough scheme. Cost £70 billion (cf cost of PPE, 2019-end 2021, £17.5 billion). - Energy bill relief/energy price guarantee. Cost £30.3 billion + ? for specific measures such as reduced council tax charges (2022-23). - Country-specific protection schemes for persons from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Cost ? - Assistance to Ukraine following Russian invasion to 2024 £9.5 billion plus £3 billion promised for current FY. - Public support for a growing population of economically inactive people. Cost ?
My point is simply that many of the problems we now face would have been there under any government, and things will not be easy whoever wins the forthcoming election. Certainly, the last few years haven’t seen relentless spending cuts and closures to fund tax reductions. It is more a case of long-term problems of low productivity, sharply rising population and low investment coming home to roost.
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