Starmer talking about immigration policy

[ossie]

People living here who want to train as a doctor or nurse are quite able to, all they need is the necessary intelligence and a willingness to put in the required effort. There are no bars to entering the profession other than gaining the necessary qualifications. Four of our friend's children have qualified as doctors in the last five years.

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

[pete75]

People living here who want to train as a doctor or nurse are quite able to, all they need is the necessary intelligence and a willingness to put in the required effort. There are no bars to entering the profession other than gaining the necessary qualifications. Four of our friend's children have qualified as doctors in the last five years.

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

A lot of university entrance is competitive. Those who don't get offered a place are obviously regarded as lacking something compared to the successful candidates.
Financial pressures? The costs are a bargain - about £45,000 in fees for a course that costs over £250,000 to run. All four recently qualified medics we know had their fees and living costs paid by their parents though. This is not at all unusual since grants were abolished and course fees introduced.

[Psamathe]

People living here who want to train as a doctor or nurse are quite able to, all they need is the necessary intelligence and a willingness to put in the required effort. There are no bars to entering the profession other than gaining the necessary qualifications. Four of our friend's children have qualified as doctors in the last five years.

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

A lot of university entrance is competitive. Those who don't get offered a place are obviously regarded as lacking something compared to the successful candidates.
...

I'd always read that one of the main reasons training places are capped is limits on the number of placements available in hospitals (placements that form part of the course). Higher numbers would mean not enough placements for them all to complete the course.

Ian

[pete75]

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

A lot of university entrance is competitive. Those who don't get offered a place are obviously regarded as lacking something compared to the successful candidates.
...

I'd always read that one of the main reasons training places are capped is limits on the number of placements available in hospitals (placements that form part of the course). Higher numbers would mean not enough placements for them all to complete the course.

Ian

A good point.

[Tangled Metal]

A friends eldest child got accepted for a medical course but she had to do it through the army. Despite A grade student with drive she knew that there was no guarantee that getting the grades to get on a course would actually get you on it. In the end she got an officer's rank and pay while at university, no debts and a guaranteed surgery rotation and post qualification training position in surgery. Last contact after she did her first year but she'll be an experienced surgeon by now I have no doubt.

Another friend was a Hungarian qualified doctor working over here. She graduated and the qualified as a registered doctor in Hungary in one less year than over here. Aiui after your 5 year degree you're not registered as a doctor. You then get into a 2 year training job within a hospital doing rotations. After the first year if things go well you get a kind of half registered status as a doctor, full after 2 years (7 years after starting uni course). My Hungarian friend got on the two year course in order to improve her ability TY be a doctor. The UK system is considered better than Hungarian one. However under equivalence systems that applied back then under the EU and no doubtstill now she was doing her first year on that post qualification training but being registered doctor out ranked those in their second year. So instead of second years dumping the shoot jobs on her in the first year she did things the other way around despite not being as qualified in real terms.

This last example I think shows the risks involved with overseas recruited medical staff. Equivalency systems are negotiated as part of a political process not with a true and provable equivalency to it. Not all qualified doctors around the world are equal went registered under different training systems. We've experienced it with nurses from UK vs other countries.

[ossie]

People living here who want to train as a doctor or nurse are quite able to, all they need is the necessary intelligence and a willingness to put in the required effort. There are no bars to entering the profession other than gaining the necessary qualifications. Four of our friend's children have qualified as doctors in the last five years.

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

A lot of university entrance is competitive. Those who don't get offered a place are obviously regarded as lacking something compared to the successful candidates.
Financial pressures? The costs are a bargain - about £45,000 in fees for a course that costs over £250,000 to run. All four recently qualified medics we know had their fees and living costs paid by their parents though. This is not at all unusual since grants were abolished and course fees introduced.

When quoting £250k you can see why the UK has always been a bit canny in limiting posts. It costs the tax payer nothing to recruit an overseas doctor. That said well done on each of your four friends covering £45k of fees, rent and living costs, evidence that the profession is still almost impossible for many sections of society to even contemplate. Notwithstanding plenty of students also enter off the back of a science degree, plus a masters in graduate schemes, so add another three / four years of study (£27k -36k) plus rent and living costs.

My son must be approaching £100k of debt and he hasn't graduated yet.

BMJ article on medical students dropping out due to poverty

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/377/bmj.o1108.full.pdf

[Carlton green]

Not so. The bar on UK medical degree courses are well documented notwithstanding the financial pressures on students. Positions are capped. There are only 7500 medical and dentistry place available this year for UK students. You make it sound like a conveyer belt, its far from it. We have students with the qualifications, intelligence and willingness just not the Uni places.

A lot of university entrance is competitive. Those who don't get offered a place are obviously regarded as lacking something compared to the successful candidates.
Financial pressures? The costs are a bargain - about £45,000 in fees for a course that costs over £250,000 to run. All four recently qualified medics we know had their fees and living costs paid by their parents though. This is not at all unusual since grants were abolished and course fees introduced.

When quoting £250k you can see why the UK has always been a bit canny in limiting posts. It costs the tax payer nothing to recruit an overseas doctor. That said well done on each of your four friends covering £45k of fees, rent and living costs, evidence that the profession is still almost impossible for many sections of society to even contemplate. Notwithstanding plenty of students also enter off the back of a science degree, plus a masters in graduate schemes, so add another three / four years of study (£27k -36k) plus rent and living costs.

My son must be approaching £100k of debt and he hasn't graduated yet.

BMJ article on medical students dropping out due to poverty

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/377/bmj.o1108.full.pdf

An interesting contrast of real experiences.

The experience of my children’s generation is that Medicine is next too impossibly hard to get into at both undergraduate and post graduate level, that and that there is significant discrimination against then / in favour of ‘minority groups’. Those that have got through leave the country as soon as they are able to do so, they find themselves well treated overseas and badly treated here - shame all around

[al_yrpal]

Net migration in the UK has hit a record high of 504,000 in the past year, surpassing levels seen even before Brexit.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that migration rose from 173,000 in the year to June 2021 to 504,000 in the year to June 2021, an increase of 331,000.

The total - based on the number entering the UK minus those leaving - is 170,000 more than the previous post-war record of 331,000 in the 2015.

The increase stems from a surge in visas for foreign nationals to live, study and work in the UK, which exceeded one million for the first time in the year to June.

No wonder there's a housing shortage and the NHS is struggling.

Al

[Psamathe]

Net migration in the UK has hit a record high of 504,000 in the past year, surpassing levels seen even before Brexit.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that migration rose from 173,000 in the year to June 2021 to 504,000 in the year to June 2021, an increase of 331,000.

The total - based on the number entering the UK minus those leaving - is 170,000 more than the previous post-war record of 331,000 in the 2015.

The increase stems from a surge in visas for foreign nationals to live, study and work in the UK, which exceeded one million for the first time in the year to June.

No wonder there's a housing shortage and the NHS is struggling.

Al

I thought we were supposed to have "taken back control of our borders". Brexit campaigning politicians never explained that having control of our borders would mean increased immigration numbers. Wonder what the referendum result would have been had they explained the impact of us having such control back.

Ian

[roubaixtuesday]

Net migration in the UK has hit a record high of 504,000 in the past year, surpassing levels seen even before Brexit.
...

...
No wonder there's a housing shortage and the NHS is struggling.

Al

The NHS is dependent on these immigrants.

Fully a quarter of GPs are of non British origin.

Far from causing the NHS to struggle, these immigrants are all that prevents its total collapse.

[roubaixtuesday]

I thought we were supposed to have "taken back control of our borders". Brexit campaigning politicians never explained that having control of our borders would mean increased immigration numbers. Wonder what the referendum result would have been had they explained the impact of us having such control back.

Ian

At the risk of being boring [surely not, I hear you cry!] the remainer community, myself included on these boards, warned that exactly this would happen.

We also warned that fishing would not revive, NI settlement was in danger, there would be a significant hit to the overall economy, the NHS would be at risk etc etc etc.

Ask if these have duly come about.

Project fear, innit.

[roubaixtuesday]

The experience of my children’s generation is that Medicine is next too impossibly hard to get into at both undergraduate and post graduate level, that and that there is significant discrimination against then / in favour of ‘minority groups’.

First of all, you speak for yourself, not an entire generation.

[moderated]

Thirdly, my own experience is absolutely different; that the process for getting into medicine requires contacts, time and cash only available to a very privileged minority. Notably those in private education.

[Stevek76]

No, what he was talking about was businesses and public services taking advantage of perfectly regular, bog-ordinary migration of workers, permitted by the law as it has existed from time-to-time. No different from British engineers going to work in Australia, or British acedemics going to take up a post in the US. What he was telling them was, in summary: the law has changed so that there is now a lot less opportunity for you to recruit foreign labour, and don't expect me to change it back again when I become PM; you need to sort yourselves out to be less reliant on recruiting that way. Nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers.

Strikes me that there's a bit of ugly dog whistling mixed in with Starmer's current messages. We seem to have a swathe of voters who seem to want some impossible combination of low immigration, low tax & regulation and fat pensions (even private annuities have to be paid by present worker activity) on an aging population. Oddly, looking at present polling, immigration isn't even a significant issue anymore (and at any rate, the amount it's perceived as an issue correlates most strongly with coverage in the daily hate mail, which tells a story in itself really).

There's obviously issues with the way employers have been allowed to become reliant upon it in limited sectors but these problems would be far better dealt with via better employment regulations, which is going to be a requirement at any rate should we wish to attract UK citizens to those job, excessive barriers to the movement of people is just more economic pain being dumped on a country that's willingly also cuased itself economic pain by raising significant trade barriers.

Of course, theres the further issue here that we don't exactly have large quantities of workers sat around idle in the first place. Even with sections such as this:

1.7M caring for family

We could certainly turn most of those into 'economically active' workers for accounting purposes, but this would require a higher tax burden economy - i.e. rather more like our scandinavian neighbours where high quality care is provided by the state and not something family members are expected to pick up. It's a similar situation with child care, the UK's shockingly bad state provision in this area is an economic restriction as it prevents parents from working as they might desire.

The "cheap labour" concern is something that applies in normal times when inflation is at 2% or something like that. Right now, with runaway inflation, most people are seeing their effective income drop. We now have the conundrum of how to bring effective earning back up without that being a further driver for inflation. I fear that the only ways to bring inflation down are to have cheaper energy and a drmatic drop in living standards that forces prices to stall. The first is doubtful and the second is painful.

Or we just embrace a level of inflation, keep income in line with what is largely cost push inflation and allow some effective devaluation of overinflated assets and wealth to take place. of course, the same sort of voter mentioned above doesn't want that because they've sat on incredible house price gains (not to mention the large number of landlord on the side MPs)

[al_yrpal]

If you are an avowed lefty, listen to the BBC and get other news from the Guardian you risk getting a jaundiced view....

https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/w ... k-economy/

Al

[roubaixtuesday]

If you are an avowed lefty, listen to the BBC and get other news from the Guardian you risk getting a jaundiced view....

https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/w ... k-economy/

Al

Lol.

Julian Jessop, well known totally unbiased analyst and enthusiastic supporter of Trussonomics.

That you regard these people as reliable, but the BBC as "lefty" shows how far down the rabbit hole you are.

Here he is on that catastrophic Truss/Kwarteng mini budget

The initial reaction from most economic commentators and in the financial markets has been a loud boo! There are some things I would have done differently. But the overall strategy is sound and sentiment should recover as the economic benefits become clearer

https://julianhjessop.com/2022/09/24/mo ... ni-budget/

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.