You may have heard rumblings in the news recently about plans to ‘curb’ immigration, by changing the rules so as to prevent foreign postgraduate students at U.K. universities from bringing family members to the U.K. with them. This comes off the back of an awful lot of ‘pitch rolling’ for an announcement that net migration to the U.K. has been in the region of 700,000 – 1,000,000 over the past year. Clearly, the Government wants to be seen to be doing something, and to have things under control. And this move might actually help matters (even while deflecting attention away from the fact that it is a problem almost entirely of the Tory party’s own making). Is it to be hoped that we are going to see a rational discussion emerge about the scale of immigration into the U.K.? Not judging by the reaction of the chattering classes, but perhaps among the people who actually count – i.e., the electorate.
First things first: the postgraduate dependant issue may sound like a fringe one, but it is genuinely important. In 2019, the Government changed the rules for foreign students, permitting them to stay in the country for two years (on a Graduate Visa) after their course has finished to look for work – the idea being, of course, that they will then find jobs and stay for longer. No doubt the government thought this was a brilliant wheeze for boosting the economy. And no doubt there was a similar rationale for allowing dependants of postgraduate students to also come to, and stay, in the U.K.: it would encourage more people to study at U.K. universities and hopefully contribute to the economy afterwards.
But – entirely predictably – this new scheme rapidly turned into a gravy train, the true scale of which has been concealed by the fact that universities are very reluctant to talk about it. Basically, U.K. universities are in a tough position financially at the moment. The number of domestic students is flatlining and will gradually decline over time due to falling birth rates. At the same time, inflation is increasing and universities haven’t been allowed to charge more in the way of fees. They are therefore being squeezed. What, then is a university VC to do? The only way to shore up, and hopefully increase, student numbers in these circumstances is to try to get more international students in. (In this way, of course, universities are a kind of microcosm for the U.K. economy as a whole.) Naturally, VCs seized upon these changes to the visa rules as a way to inflate international student numbers – by dreaming up myriad new taught master’s degrees with almost nothing in the way of entry requirements, advertised almost exclusively in overseas markets, and nakedly billed to prospective students as a pathway to employment in the U.K. The message has been simple: “Come to us to study for a two-year MA in International Something or Other, bring your family, and you will get a student visa, which will then allow you to matriculate to a graduate visa, and hence in the fullness of time a working visa, and you and your dependants can all stay in the country for as long as you like. Oh, and by the way, the course will be a piece of the proverbial and you’ll barely have to do any studying at all. PS – Please give us £24k for the privilege.”
The result has been entirely predictable: huge numbers of bullshit postgraduate courses, huge numbers of international postgraduate students who aren’t actually here to study but to look for work, and huge numbers of demoralised staff and domestic students who are forced to deal with the consequences of large influxes of very bad and unmotivated people on university campuses. My university’s library, for example, has been utterly transformed into what I can only describe as a creche – full of the family members of international students, many of them children, simply treating the place as a kind of public square. And what goes on in the classroom is abysmal. When most of these students turn up, they haven’t done a lick of preparation or reading (why would they, when they are fundamentally not here to study, but to get a visa?), and very often spend their time disrupting the session because they have no respect for the university experience and basically don’t give a toss what happens so long as they get that all important graduation and hence graduate status. Meanwhile, the quality of the experience for domestic students goes down the toilet, and the entire educational calling of universities is utterly degraded and debased: we have in a very real sense been reduced to the status of a mere hoop which people have to jump through in order to migrate into the country on a semi-permanent basis.
This isn’t to mention the impact on house prices, public services, wages… the familiar litany. Even in terms of sheer numbers, the consequences have been shocking – according to the Beeb there were nearly 140,000 visas granted to dependants last year, up from around 19,000 in 2020 and around 50,000 in 2021. It is fashionable and trite to use the phrase ‘this is not sustainable’, but, well, this really isn’t sustainable.
But this also makes abolishing the ‘right’ (I hate the use of that word in this context) for dependants of postgraduate students to come to live in the U.K. a relatively ‘easy win’ to get net immigration down by a not inconsiderable amount, if done properly. And the move is therefore to be welcomed, as anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise.
Of course, common sense is in short supply in U.K. academia, and the reaction from that sector has been predictably foolish. The same BBC article as linked to above cites Jo Grady – the utterly incompetent General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) – calling the change a “vindictive move” (welcome to left wing politics in 2023, where it is vindictive for a Government to want to have some control over how many people enter the country), and Adam Habib, director of SOAS (by some distance the most easily caricatured loony-left academic institution in the country) bleating that this will create a “financial crisis” for those universities which are “dependent on the fee income of international students”. That becoming dependent on international student fees might not have been such a wise move in the first place is of course lost on him; the Government might reflect that a financial crisis at SOAS and other institutions like it may be precisely what the country needs right now.
But it is rarely worth taking the views of academics seriously. The wider point to be made is that, at long last, we might just be seeing the Conservative Party begin to do what it is supposed to do and respond to electoral forces. Long before the release of these latest figures, people could see for themselves just how widespread and rapid the increase in immigration has been since 2016. It is not racist, nor indeed in any sense illegitimate, to be worried about the effect this is all having on schools, hospitals, housing costs, wages, and so on. And people are actually now starting to talk about it properly where for a long time they were simply forbidden from doing so. The issue – and the fact that it has long been impossible to even discuss it as an issue – has been a running sore in our politics for too long. This move to cut down on international student dependants is a sign that, while it might be a while before the tanker turns completely, the Tory party is beginning to grasp that it has to do something about immigration or lose power for a generation.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
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“Tartan army don’t socially distance”.
Like those Scotland fans at the pub in Aberdeen when Scotland qualified… good for them anyway. Maybe we could learn something from them?
I notice stamping and clapping instead of singing and shouting at footy matches doesn’t seem to have caught on. I wonder if any Scots will take any notice of the nut jobs who said they shouldn’t go to Manchester?
“Bloomsbury staff must be vaccinated”.
Seriously, what jobs will be left for us second class citizens in apartheid Britain? lying government scum. Even plumbers who occasionally do a job in a care home have to comply if they want to keep their job, apparently.
Against Vaccine Passports is a worthy cause, but there seem to be precious few businesses in their directory. Early days.
Anyhow, such things could be a lifeline in apartheid Britain.
There’s a similar site called openforall with a lot of businesses on it, but there doesn’t seem to be a search function, so not easy to use.
“Covid secure wedding”.
I tell you now, we are no way “out of this” as long as such crap continues.
Followed by a socially distanced honeymoon?
I thought that was normal?
I’m due to attend a wedding soon but I’m having severe reservations. The couple aren’t too obsessive but other family members are. I’m absolutely through with all this crap so it’s going to be….interesting.
Go anyway, and when any of the vaxxers get a bit snarky, demand to know what they’re so afraid of if they’ve been vaccinated? If their vaccine works, then they’re at no risk from you, unless they don’t believe the vaccines work, in which case, why did they have a potentially cytotoxic poison injected into their veins?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Du2wm5nhTXY
Spike protein is very dangerous, it’s cytotoxic (Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Bret Weinstein)
“One in four Covid patients hospitalised while vitamin D deficient die”.
Tallies with what some of us have been saying for ages, and explains a lot – including why Norway and Finland appear to have done so well.
Sir Simon Stevens as Sancho Panza….his faith in Quixote’s imaginary world clearly wavering……..
So Saint Ardern got the Holy Snake Oil without pain. Amen, O Most Holy One.
Soon all Kiwis will have been jabbed, amen amen.
And then they will open their borders,will they?
Only to other jabberwocks, for sure,
And then we’ll see how effective the snake oils really are.
Or if the shots do snicker-snack!
Hope the cunt dies
Agree.
she got the saline one obvs – lets see if she keels over or gets some hideous rash all over her face within a week of getting it – can’t risk the people in charge of this awfulness not being alive and kicking to be in a position to exert their authority and keep that madness going until the job is done
The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline
Yeah, right. All my friends in their 50s who got covid, and there are quite a few, were all absolutely fine and no-one went near a hospital. If you are in your 30s and get covid, you will be fine and won’t go to hospital. If however you get a blood clot you might need medical assistance, I would suggest.
This is dangerous propaganda and dangerous manipulation of statistics, if ever I saw it.
I wonder if the lazy incompetent journos have read about the record levels of post vaccine mortality among young adults in Israel. Or even care.
Absolutely disgusting and shameful. Why would LS highlight this article except to expose its deceitfulness.
Precisely because it is deceitful?
I’m not upset at seeing this kind of article, except at the politics behind it.
Indeed, the stats they’re trying to push in that article are amazing. Looking at the comments it seems no one is being taken in by them. For a start the figures don’t take into account the comorbidities of the ICU/hospital intake.
Trying to make a case using data points of 1.5 vs 1.9 per 100,000 is crazy. Approx 9m 30-39yo in the U.K. so 1.5 equates to 135 people and 1.9 171 people.
How many of those 171 would be morbidly obese? How many of those 135 would be perfectly healthy?
As predicted in April.
Ah but now they claim they can treat the blood clots. So that’s all right then.
Andrew Lloyd Webber backing down in the face of mild bullying from the govt is disappointing if predictable. Businesses rebelled in Italy and I believe largely got away with it, and Italy is a much more heavily policed country than the UK.
As I am apparently as ‘dangerous as a drunk driver’ I don’t really care what this twat does.
Spineless weirdo
the obvs bought him off with some kind of a bung or something – way they have bought off the bulk of the UK population with their furlough, business grants [which will never be repaid] and eat out to help out etc
He wanted to help the government by using the ‘passports’ as a show of ‘defiance’ but obviously not go enough tickets to push that one
Fat old cuck without testicles is all mouth and no trousers? Say it isn’t so !!!!
The hand wringing about the Tartan Army from the Daily Fail was hilarious. More of this please !
Was quite interesting also that the Daily Fail is now trying to scare under 40’s into taking the shot and doing the Governments dirty work for them.
How can an increase from 0.8 to 1.9 every 100,000 cases be regarded as significant? I’m amazed they didn’t have a headline claiming over 100% increase !!!!
Number of healthy people, aged 0-40, who died within 28 days of a positive test in the past 10 weeks I hear you ask? 2 !!!!!
OMFG
Clownworld !!!
supposedly “healthy” people. As was broadcast to the world last weekend, just because you appear to be in peak fitness doesn’t mean there’s not something potentially fatally wrong with you.
Relative risk reduction is their playpen. The zombies are all in the playpen, unaware that there’s a world outside the barrier of lies.
Have “dipped in” to GB news on and off since it opened and perhaps I’ve been unlucky but I was expecting a albeit more moderate tv version of TR, but, oh dear, it comes over as a “all day breakfast tv” station featuring the usual “brain dead” content you would expect from daytime tv and the one show.
What do my fellow sceptics think?
Sadly I agree, had high hopes but the presenters talk over each other all the time and it’s just irritating to listen to and the content while less biased than that if other outkets us pretty much drivel.
Haven’t heard that they’ve had any of the alternative experts on regarding lockdowns or the vaccines, but then, as you say, I only dip in and then pretty quickly dip out.
Lozza Fox was on in the evening a couple of nights ago – good interview – made good case, plus Andrew Neill the other evening also made the case well and concluded with “so the public health emergency is clearly over” which was heartening, but otherwise would tend to agree – less biased than other MSM and the talking over each other and low production values are a bit irritating
Yes, I have occasionally hit an interesting bit, but overall it is pretty dire so far.
Agreed. I had to retune my Freeview recorder to get it and soon realised I needn’t have bothered
I’ve been similarly unimpressed so far. Their only plus point is to have proper interviews with people who’d never get invited onto other MSM news channels except to get shouted over and accused of being some sort of -ist.
Dan Miller’s piece in the CW is a must read, as ever.
The image about who is really in charge is also worth sharing….
best article I have read yet
I thought the country was already thoroughly trashed by the government and gullible arseholes.
“Brits in 30s now more risk of Covid than blood clots from AZ jab” – The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline”
There we go. Right on time.
Who could possibly have predicted that?
Just a basic observation. Nothing particularly new, but illustrative.
I’m sitting in a pub, waiting for a meal.
I was challenged about a mask on entry. Well – I guess they have to.
“Exempt”
But – then – ”Have you anything to prove it?”. A year on, FFS.
I restrained myself – I have every sympathy with serving staff. But I think that the steam from ears was noted.
Two things :
– The sheer absurdity of the interior mask regulations (putting on masks for a piss, otherwise no masks etc etc) are so absurd that anything with a brain would fall about laughing rather than observe them.
– The reactions of my companions : “Don’t make a fuss” as I (quietly) fumed.
We are truly fucked.
WEF twitter page promoting books the other week.
I wonder if Bloomsbury will be selective, under instructions what to publish.