by cbeach | 2025-12-01 00:09:30+00:00
> At this point, with the tech now available, almost everyone gets rich by doing net zero

The likes of Dale Vince (Ecotricity), certainly get rich by doing net zero. Significant levies have been placed on taxpayers and consumers for years, with the money flowing into the companies of politically-connected individuals like Vince.

> the child benefit cap was itself introduced back when parents with too many kids were the scapegoat.

Parents that choose to have more children than they can afford are not "scapegoats." They are breaking the social contract.

The benefit cap was not retro-actively applied. It didn't put any existing children in poverty. It only applied to future births, to parents who were choosing to have children at the expense of taxpayers.

That's why the cap is a popular policy: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/20...

> Scrapping a one off payment to save money in the short term, at the cost of worsening long-term economic benefits by failing to improve national logistics [HS2].

The project cost has ballooned to the point where it will exceed the long term projected economic benefit (benefit-cost ratio of 0.9, as per a 2022 review). It is a white elephant.

> Do you mean asylum seekers?

No, I mean illegal migrants, as I said. Genuine Asylum seekers don't throw their documents overboard and illegally enter the country on a dinghy from France.

Take the war in Ukraine and and the post-war threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan for example - in both cases, the UK government made advance provision for documented, background-checked individuals, including the elderly, women and children (as you'd expect from genuine refugees). And the UK made safe routes available for those people. That's how the system should work.

Those who illegally enter the country via the Channel are 88-90% male, most of whom are fighting-age, and most of whom originate from countries that are not currently at war.

You still believe they're genuine asylum seekers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Channel_illegal_migran...

> that's a whole one billion per year you might save from not letting UK hotels rip you off, or two if you let these people work and support themselves.

If these people are allowed to economically benefit from illegally entering our country, it will send completely the wrong message to the third world countries they came from.

I don't want low-skilled/unskilled unvetted immigration that lowers our country's productivity, makes women and girls less safe, impacts public services and housing, divides our finite welfare spend and causes ghettoisation and (eventually) Balkanisation of my own country. Why would I want that?

> Brexit (and consider who owns Reform) has cost the economy an estimated 6-8% GDP by this point, per year, in lost growth opportunities — around £200bn/year.

I've heard various figures bandied around by continuity Remainers. They vary wildly, because at this point, nearly ten years later, it's impossible to scientifically compare a Brexit/non-Brexit scenario.

All we can know are the facts - Brexit gave us a huge opportunity to align our regulation with the precise nature of our economy, and an opportunity to avoid burdensome EU regulation (this is already happening in terms of the EU's hapless AI regulation). It's also an opportunity to avoid paying tens of billions of pounds annually into the EU's black hole unaccounted budget every year (consider the lifetime cost of that expense!)

The fact that the Europhillic Tory and Labour establishment failed to capitalise fully on Brexit is their fault - not the fault of the majority of voters who voted to leave the EU.

Luckily we have a party in 2029 who is unaligned with the Brussels and Strasbourg establishment, and who can make the bold decisions required to capitalise on our new freedoms and sovereignty. I relish this prospect.