Pope Francis has raised the alarm about the demographic crisis and told millennials in Italy to stop being “selfish and egotistical” and to start families instead of substituting pets for children. Philip Pilkington has looked at the issue in the Telegraph and concluded the Pope is right. What’s more, immigration won’t solve the problem, he says, because it is a Ponzi scheme that fails to make a country younger. Here’s an excerpt.
It looks like the West is finally snapping out of its Malthusian trance and realising that it is in the process of falling off a demographic cliff. Conservative MP Miriam Cates has suggested that falling birth rates are the biggest threat to Western civilisation. She has called on the state to step in and encourage young people to start families by rewarding stay-at-home mums with tax breaks.
This sort of rhetoric is not popular on either the small government Right or the culturally radical Left. Small government conservatives simply do not want more state intervention in people’s lives, while the culturally radical hark back to 1960s era rhetoric against the stifling impact of the nuclear family.
Yet both would have a hard time arguing against the deleterious effects of an ageing population on society and the economy. If there are too many old people relative to young, then there will not be as many resources to go around.
The shrinking number of young people will have to work longer hours to maintain the same level of output and, as the number of older mouths to feed increases, they will be compensated less and less for their effort.
Already, the state pension is looking like it will soon be a thing of the past.
The solution floated by both the small government Right and the culturally radical Left is simple: immigration.
As the domestic population ages, they tell us, we can simply import workers from abroad. Any objection risks being branded xenophobic and sparking a row.
Yet the very terms of the debate are misaligned because most people making these arguments believe immigration can solve the problem of an aging population.
But the data are clear on this: it cannot. It may be able to address the decline in labour force growth, but that is a separate issue.
For evidence, look at the land of ‘fur babies’ decried by the Pope: Italy. The country has seen such a severe decline in its birth rate and over such a long period that it provides a perfect object of study.
Italy is a nation that has tried to immigrate its way out of its demographic problems, meaning we can fruitfully compare it with Japan, a country with similarly dire demographic problems but which is more averse to immigration.
The period that is worth looking at is between 2000 and 2013. Within this timeframe, Italy experienced a significant wave of migration. Over 3.72 million more immigrants arrived in Italy than emigrants left.
Over the same period, Japan’s net migration levels were half that, at 1.88 million. Consider also that Japan has over double the population of Italy, meaning that between 2000 and 2013, on a per capita basis, Italy saw almost four times as much net migration as Japan.
At the same time, Italy and Japan had roughly identical fertility rates. Italy’s total fertility rate stood at around 1.37 on average, while Japan’s was around 1.35.
The difference between the two is basically a rounding error, making the comparison extremely precise.
Now, if immigrants can indeed offset falling birth rates, we should see the median age of Italians rise much slower than the median age of Japanese in this period. After all, Italy had four times the number of net migrants on a per capita basis.
Do we see this? No. The Italian and Japanese median age move in lockstep. Italy’s larger number of migrants made no difference.
Philip suggests two reasons for this unexpected result: that migrants typically arrive in their 20s rather than at age zero like a baby, and second that migrants tend to assimilate to domestic birth rates.
A third reason may be chain migration, whereby migrants bring over older relatives, cancelling out any impact on average age.
“The reality is that there is simply no easy way out,” Philip concludes.
These issues were major talking points at the National Conservatism conference yesterday, with many speakers – including Suella Braverman, Louise Perry and Mary Harrington – talking on themes of lowering immigration and raising birth rates.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Ross Clark has noted in the Telegraph that the Conservatives are on track for a thumping election defeat in no small part due to upsetting everyone by constantly talking tough on immigration but never delivering:
There are votes to be won in reducing migration; there are some votes to be won (though almost certainly far fewer) in extolling the virtues of a liberal migration policy. What certainly won’t earn you votes is barking at migrants every five minutes, threatening deportation, establishing a ‘hostile environment’ – while simultaneously practising a policy of mass migration. That just makes a Government look silly and ineffectual.
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Peter Hitchens is, as usual, right: the death penalty is in principle a good thing, but the present state of Britain’s judiciary makes it impossible to advocate seriously for its reintroduction. The Letby case is a prime example of that, as was the Sally Clark case 20 years ago.
I say we give the convicts a choice: 1) death, or 2) life in prison without parole. Many will actually choose the former. Once on death row, you get 30 days to decide your fate, and if you don’t decide either way by day 29, by default you get executed on day 30. And none of these fancy expensive drugs (or gas, or electric chairs), an ordinary firing squad will do just fine. (Cigarette and blindfold optional.)
I think that having the State in a position where they can decide to end your life on a pre-text is a bad idea right now. You might end up on a trap door with only a rope to break your fall for a misplaced Tweet. On the Letby case, I know that there is a lot of emotion around this, but there are also considerable concerns about the case and verdict and an appeal is likely.
I’m with Blackstone, especially on this type of case. IMHO there are too many cases like Lucia de Berk or Ben Gunn for comfort.
Do we want the death penalty?
Think about it.
Do we want to hand the government on a plate a method of permanently silencing individuals they do not like, when “cancelling” them does not go far enough?
Do we trust the government not to abuse the law? Look at how they used the Public Health Act.
Do some of us suspect that over the last three years, the government has been killing off sections of society they do not like, under our very noses?
As a sticker on a bus stop in north London observed, Boris Johnson wrote about “why is nobody controlling the population?” in 2008 or so.
As for whether LL is guilty or not, with all the circumstantial evidence (funny how she has a highly memorable alliterative name, like Sharon Shoesmith, who was also turned into a public pariah): I would like to think that if the evidence got through a 10-month trial, with all the crown court protocol, and the jury took a month to deliberate, it’s extremely unlikely that she is innocent. There were probably plenty of opportunities for her to get off on a technicality. I don’t know how widely reported the case was early on (as I avoid mainstream media), but I’d never heard of her until the guilty verdict.
The media whipping up a storm about her refusing to appear in the dock has echoes of the baying mob against those who refused to clap, to obey the mythical “only allowed out for an hour”, to wear a face nappy, to take the jab. Even Sunak was interviewed saying he will change the law on this – an easy way for him to be “seen to do something”, just like lockdowns.
Lots of the evidence for Partygate was purely circumstantial, as Saint Boris tried to argue (he didn’t use the word “circumstantial” – it’s too long for him).
And if anything comes to light (we can only hope) about the Plandemic being deliberately started, and the government locking down for sh*** and giggles, evidence for this is likely to be circumstantial.
“I would like to think that if the evidence got through a 10-month trial, with all the crown court protocol, and the jury took a month to deliberate, it’s extremely unlikely that she is innocent.”
Given what many of us have learnt over the last few years, we should IMO definitely be questioning the integrity of the justice system as applied in individual cases. Judges can be bought off and/or threatened, as can defence lawyers. And defence lawyers can be incompetent. And the jury process is also open to abuse and cannot be relied upon, IMO.
The death penalty is acceptable when one has a sound and uncorrupted criminal justice system. We don’t have one. Interestingly , in Old Testament times, which is often condemned for being a bloodthirsty era, criminal convictions required at least two witnesses to the crime, and conviction rested on the eyewitness accounts being in agreement. Anybody giving false witness to the crime was dealt the same punishment as the accused would have received. There was no question of convicting someone on circumstantial evidence either, like simply being in a certain place at a certain time.
If Lucy Letby ever eventually wins an appeal, a lot of people are going to look very stupid, like Lord Denning and many others after the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four won their appeals.
“Disbelief at Reading Festival’s ban on ‘cultural appropriation’ clothes”
Judging by the state the revellers left the campsite in, we should all be grateful that our future World is in such good hands..
And I bet the vast majority of these people just abandoning their unwanted posessions to the four winds consider themselves ‘green’ and ‘eco aware’. Hypocrites.
Thery leave the tents and sleeping bags ‘for charity’ as if anyone actually wants damaged and burned tents, and sleeping bags reeking of urine and vomit. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole lot ended up in a hole in the ground…
“Democrats’ climate change blame game for Hawaii fire confronted by reality after Maui identifies cause”
…but as always, the lie has been round the world while truth was putting its boots on…
Some arsonists apprehended in Greece are allegedly migrants also.
”For the past week, Greece has once again been plagued by wildfires, particularly in the vicinity of Alexandroupolis, in the northeast of the country, near the border with Turkey, which is close to where 13 Pakistani and Syrian migrants were arrested for arson.
A video posted on social networks last Tuesday says the group was caught red-handed trying to start a fire near the town of Alexandroupolis. They have been charged with illegal entry and attempted arson by a public prosecutor, but one government source says the fire was an “accident.”
https://rmx.news/greece/13-pakistani-and-syrian-migrants-arrested-for-arson-as-deadly-wildfires-erupt-near-greek-border/
..I think it’s still got some way to run..a lot of stuff I’m reading is now saying that while TPTB want people to accept the ‘utility company’ story…they don’t believe that’s true either.
There are still entire families missing presumed dead….including hundreds of children, and still no one is talking about them….….there is still a lot of talk about it being a land-grab?……Still a lot of apparent inconsistencies in the stories…
I have heard that Oprah WInfrey bought the land not too long back, something I’ve not been able to confirm…
The brilliant actor James Woods said this on his X feed, about Maui..which might hold a fair bit of truth!?
“Someday after all the land is appropriated, Hollywood will make a movie about this. Rich people in tuxedoes will celebrate their compassion and give each other little gold statues. And then everything will be forgotten”
“Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns”
Wikipedia’s content IS a social justice campaign, where they are able to squeeze it in. Who “runs” it is somewhat opaque to me; there are lots of volunteers contributing who I imagine are mainly lefties judging by the articles, but I am not sure how you get to be one of the people who decide stuff when there are disputes – but it’s been taken over by the left just like everything else. Still some good stuff in there on non-political subjects.
Indeed. On TV series and discographies, Wikipedia is fine. It’s also very useful when looking up peoples’ Early Life. But much beyond that it veers off into far-left propaganda.
You only have to look at the Talk page for each article to see how the process is managed.
Only left and far-left leaning publications are acceptable as “trusted sources”, so it’s inherently biased and often full of establishment lies, e.g. Trump and Russia.
On a related note, I use a search blocker called uBlacklist which allows you to block websites from google search results. I find results to be much more useful when you get rid of the propaganda from the Guardian, BBC, Independent, CNN and NYT that Google pushes to the top.
Why isn’t it cultural appropriation when non-Europeans wear European style clothing? Tells you all you need to know. Everything to do with race and culture is just a thinly disguised way to attack white people and our culture.
South Asians should stop using chillis in their food: chillis came from the Americas and were introduced to Asia by evil white people from Portugal.
Thanks; I didn’t know that. I will try to throw that into conversations.
The whole idea that “cultural appropriation” is bad or even avoidable is so absurd that you wonder how it has taken hold and how a civilisation that embraces ever progressed beyond living in caves.
Living in caves was cultural appropriation from Australopithecines, so wash your mouth out with soap. Oh, that was invented by foreigners too.
LOL so true
I know, right? The whole specious concept of “cultural appropriation” being somehow bad is really just silly. Literally EVERY culture in history (and prehistory), except perhaps those tiny few who remain isolated and uncontacted to this day, is “guilty” of this “sin”. Even if it is defined a bit more narrowly, such as picking and choosing what one wants from another culture and discarding the rest, practically every culture is still “guilty” of doing so as well.
Talking of isolated peoples, I once got into an argument on YouTube regarding the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Islands who tend to kill visitors. Some ship ran aground nearby at some point in the past and they went onto the ship and stripped it of stuff that looked useful to them. The narrator of this video I watched made some comment along the lines of “and so, the Sentinelese entered the Iron Age”. I pointed out that the Iron Age was when humans noticed there was iron ore in the ground, dug it up, learned how to manipulate it and made useful stuff with it. That’s not quite the same as finding a crowbar on a ship. Some lamebrain replied to me along the lines of “but yes they were in an Iron Age because they were using iron tools”. No wonder we’re doomed if people really think like that.
Indeed, one’s IQ can easily drop ten points just hearing someone say that.
As did potatoes and tomatoes and corn. These foods spread across the globe but their origin was South America.
Mustn’t forget tobacco too. Actually, isn’t tobacco due for a revival given its serious adverse effects on health?
This really does make for concerning reading when you see an overview of the situation like this. ‘Mohammed’ has eclipsed ‘John’! ‘The great replacement’ going great guns in the UK and across Europe;
”Leicester, Luton and Birmingham are among 14 large areas of England where people who identify as “white” now make up the minority. The highest proportion are found in the London boroughs of Newham (69.2%), Brent (65.4%) and Redbridge (65.2%). Outside London, the highest proportion of non-whites is in Slough (64.0%), followed by Leicester (59.1%), Luton (54.8%) and Birmingham (51.4%).
For the first time since the 7th century AD, England is no longer majority-Christian.
“The British will be a minority by 2066,” wrote David Coleman, the most important English demographer, professor at Oxford, in Prospect magazine. “The 50 percent threshold has no special demographic significance, but it will have considerable psychological and political impact, and the transition from majority to minority will represent a huge shift in cultural, political and religious identity.”
And in the future, to accommodate all immigrants from Asia, England will have to build “eighteen Birminghams”.
Mohammed today is the first name in all of England: the first in Manchester, the first in Nottingham, the first in Leicester, the first in Leeds, the first in Luton, the first in Bradford…Everywhere the same numbers in the biggest British cities.
In just a generation, Islam will be the first religion in all of England.
And to think that just ten years ago, to the great wrath of the liberal intelligentsia, David Cameron defined England as a “Christian country”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/376190
“…in pursuance of a decision on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country”, as someone once said.
Yes..although we are told that from the last census around 18% of the UK population is from an ‘ethnic’ background, what they fail to mention is that in schools that jumps to over 35% of children are from ethnic backgrounds….I’m not sure it will take to 2066?…..
Bit ‘rabbit holey’ or maybe paranoid for this early in the day ( 🙂 ) but this does sound kind of prophetic from decades ago. Maybe we are becoming the slowly boiling frogs as our cities turn gradually into prisons..and this is before the internet! Man’s got a point. ( 3min clip )
https://twitter.com/WillingWitness/status/1696202515300458788
Chilling. And quite possibly true.
Their future is in the control which can be exercised in cities, especially “smart” C40 cities. Rural areas are a real problem for them: all those hard to get to places to evade detection, outbuildings they don’t know about, farm animals and fields providing self-sufficiency, mechanical plant allowing unregulated travel/digging/building, undeclared fuel dumps, the odd firearm, plenty of pitchforks, the absence of easy surveillance/control options, not to mention a curmudgeonly local population (of which I am one). Patrick Vallance’s document on imagining net zero admits as much, in saying that institutional trust/compliance is much higher and easier to enforce among urban populations. Hence concerted attacks on rural ways of life. If enough people (1) leave the city and (2) ditch their smartphones, the whole project collapses.
Wow, spot on!
“Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns”
The naivete of some of these writers is annoying. Do they think that the social justice campaigns in Wikipedia are accidental? And are we not past the times when it is useful to say “X ought to be doing Y instead of Z,” since the whole strategy is to achieve Z?
It’s like saying that Lenin would be better off getting agriculture right instead of worrying about class enemies.
Quite. For starters, it would be helpful if Wikipedia focussed on facts and truth first and held back on narrative-based opinion, censorship and whitewash rather than AI-driven content creation!
“BlackRock hit by backlash after fall in ESG votes”
Since when has an ethically questionable company with a value greater than several countries given a sh*t about anything other than their own agenda? I’m sure they can cope with a few basis points off their share value for a few days while they drive through their plans for world domination.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/08/28/cochrane-review-the-latest-scientific-institution-ruined-by-covid-ideology-n574233#google_vignette
“This is another example of how scientific institutions have been destroying themselves. The narrative requires that mask mandates work; the reality is that they don’t. In a rational world, scientists would simply put out the evidence and let the political actors do their thing. They shouldn’t be activists for or against masks, but rather providers of evidence.
But that is no longer the role of scientists. They have assumed the role of oracles whose job it is to act as con men, backing up the claims of the “right” people.
This works in the short term–most people fall in line, believing that the scientists are non-partisan truth-tellers–and destroys scientific credibility in the long run. People catch on to the con.”
So true
Well blow me down with a feather..we were right..of course we were….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12453329/99-PERCENT-Covid-deaths-not-caused-virus-official-data.html#:~:text=Nearly%2099%20percent%20of%20%27Covid,the%20virus%2C%20official%20data%20shows.
Nearly 99 percent of ‘Covid deaths’ reported by the CDC each week are not primarily caused by the virus, official data shows.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Covid dashboard shows just 1.7 percent of the 324 Covid deaths registered in the week ending August 19 had the coronavirus as the primary cause of death.
(not behind a pay-wall)
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/authorities-in-denial-over-vaccine-link-to-soaring-pilot-deaths/
PILOT deaths are in the news again as three more have ‘died suddenly’ this month.
Recent freedom of information (FOI) requests to the CAA and the RAF show an alarming increase in the number of commercial and armed forces pilots registered unfit to fly post the vaccination rollout.
pilots:
· 2018 – 1,550 – normal year
· 2019 – 1,663 – first covid cases reported in December 2019
· 2020 – 851 – air travel restricted because of lockdowns, covid infections at their worst, no vaccine until December
· 2021 – 1,594 – vaccine widely available from January and mandated for US and Australian pilots in November but not for British, the majority of whom would have taken the vaccine or faced restrictions flying to countries with vaccine mandates
· 2022 – 2,784 – post vaccination, huge increase in failed medicals – 75 per cent.
I posted this yesterday but am reposting as this information is mind blowing & completely destroys the whole ‘deadly virus pandemic with vaccines as the only way to stop it’ false narrative. It also destroys the avian flu narrative.
It is well worth investing your time watching this. Lots of information is presented & the fact that ‘covid’ symptoms are exactly the same as radiation exposure symptoms is a good way to get folk questioning the need for a ‘vaccine’ to prevent the radiation exposure.
https://rumble.com/user/cbkovess
Hear, hear! LOL!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJs2yZpQFWA
ALISTAIR WILLIAMS …September Lockdowns?
Discussion with John Campbell and Russel Grant…
Full of interest and info…..
Starts with Moderna’s $400 million ‘donation’ to the NIH…Rishi’s investment in Moderna, and Van Tams new job there…but there’s nothing to see here!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh8CBR78DhQ
Were and are all the variants made in the lab as well?
Some credible researchers from Japan have found anomalies that suggest so.
https://www.steynonline.com/13744/who-making-the-variants
For the time being, “ULEZ: Chaos as fines cancelled”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAnStegdz6Y&list=WL&index=2 This matter was reported on GBN as well.
And another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQJ3XxKpOoU&list=WL&index=3 A “Black Belt Barrister” production this time.
Quite astonishing that there should be any question of the death penalty in the Letby case. For a start, it has not yet been demonstrated to the public that she is without any shadow of a doubt guilty.