Hello again, I've been asked by a reader to comment on the UK HPI (High Potential Individual) visa a while ago but I had been so busy of late that I have not had the time to do that, sorry. Nonetheless, having thought about it, I decided to do a Q&A on this topic to help you all understand how it works and how you might be able to take advantage of the HPI visa.
Q: Firstly, what is the UK HPI visa?
A: This UK HPI visa allows recent graduates from a list of the world's 37 top universities to come and live in the UK for two (bachelor's or master's degree) or three years (PhD). This window period is to make it easy for you to find a job in the UK whilst living in the UK and having the right to work here. You need to have graduated from that university within the last five years, although your actual age doesn't matter - so if you're a 32 year old man who graduated at the age of 22, then that was not within the last five years and you're not eligible. But if you're a 32 year old man who has just completed his master's degree last year, then you are eligible for this visa. For my Singaporean readers, this is especially interesting as both NUS and NTU have made it onto this shortlist of 37 universities and that's why many Singaporeans have started talking about this. Do note this visa is only for recent graduates of NUS/NTU, not all Singaporeans. So if you're Singaporean but didn't study at NUS or NTU, then no you're not eligible. But if you're non-Singaporean but you studied at NTU or NTU, then yes you are eligible for this visa - the eligibility is based on your degree and not your nationality per se.
Q: Can't I work in the UK without this visa? Aren't there Singaporeans already working in the UK?
A: This new scheme is designed to make it much easier for individuals to come and work in the UK - currently, there are loads of Singaporean expatriates working in the UK but it was never easy for them to try to find work here. Foreigners need a work permit to take a job in the UK and the process for an employer to apply for a work permit is complex and expensive - this means that employers would usually prefer to employ a local to avoid this complex and expensive process, unless of course, the individual they wish to hire is so highly skilled and unique that it justifies the time and money to obtain the work permit. Highly skilled Singaporean professionals have always managed to come and work in the UK but that door wasn't open to young graduates with little or no work experience - well all that just changed with the UK HPI visa as this visa makes it possible for young graduates from NUS and NTU to start their working life in the UK and move to the UK to find a job - they can now do this without a job offer. Under the old rules, these graduates would normally have to work some years in Singapore in order to accumulate enough work experience to qualify for a work permit in the UK. In short, it becomes far easier for those determined to leave Singapore and work here in the UK because the barriers to entry have been lowered significantly for those who do qualify for this HPI visa - it is great news.
A: It could but it is not a done deal. You need to have lived in the UK for five years before you can apply for permanent leave to remain: this visa gives you either two or three years - you still have to find a different visa to allow you to continue living and working in the UK in order to reach that five year threshold. The most obvious way to do this is to come to the UK with the UK HPI visa, find a job and then when the visa runs out, convince your employer (or a different employer) that you have been so great that they should sponsor your work permit. Either that or you can move onto a different visa: you could become an entrepreneur and start your own business, you could get married or try to get a visa under the skilled worker scheme - there isn't one route but a large number of different routes. Let me to use an analogy: Glasgow is about 650 km from London and if you wanted to drive from London Trafalgar Square to Glasgow George Square, there are many different routes you can take to get you from A to B. You will still end up at the same destination no matter which route you choose to take: you might pick one route over another. Maybe there's less traffic on one route and you wish to avoid traffic jams, maybe you want to avoid toll roads to pay less for that journey. Maybe you wish to go via Sheffield to visit your sister-in-law there on the way. There could be a range of reasons that determine which route you ultimately pick for that journey but the bottom line is that you will still get to your destination in Glasgow regardless as long as you plan your journey properly and you work out how you're eventually going to reach that crucial five year mark.
Q: What is the worst case scenario?
A: The worst case scenario is that a young graduate from NUS comes to the UK with the HPI visa, fails to find a decent job and can only find very poorly paid work to make ends meet, such as working in a fast food restaurant. This young graduate either runs out of money or eventually realizes that there's no way he switch to another visa that allows him to continue staying on in the UK. The UK HPI visa gives you the right to come here and work, it doesn't guarantee that you will find a good job and be successful so a lot of that it down to the individual. In this case the individual would have had an extended holiday in the UK before returning to Singapore. It would turn out to be an expensive long holiday in the UK.
Q: Does it matter what course I studied?
A: No, for the purpose of this visa, it doesn't matter. But on a more practical note, if you are a doctor or any other kind of healthcare professional, then you will not have any difficulty finding a job in the UK. But if you studied something like geography (like me), then a degree like that will make it harder to find a job. If you're really determined to move to the UK and don't care what kind of work you end up doing, then pick something like nursing or teaching - the entry level for those courses are not that high and the UK is so desperate for nurses and teachers, along with other healthcare professionals.
Q: How much does it cost to apply for it?
A: It costs £715 to apply for the visa, plus a healthcare surcharge of £624 per year. Applicants must also have enough funds to support themselves when they arrive, the figure quoted is £1,270 but that's not going to get you very far in a place like London. Furthermore, if you wish to consider using this visa, you need to consider the money you need to fly to London and how much you will need to spend finding a place to live - typically, you would need to give your landlord a deposit if you're renting for like a year. You might be able to avoid that in the short run by using a service like AirBNB for short term lets, but these will be more expensive than long term lets. So this is really not a route for someone who is totally broke, if you are fresh out of NUS or NTU and thinking about using this route, I hope you have rich parents who can support you until you manage to get your first job in the UK. How long that may take would depend on how skilled and talented you are, that could be anything from a few weeks to a few months and you will need some money till then.
Q: Do you expect a lot of people to apply for this visa?
A: I don't know how much to expect, there definitely will be some and there doesn't seem to be any kind of quota on it given that the purpose of this scheme is to attract really high potential, intelligent, talented individuals to move to the UK to work. These people have already proven themselves by studying at some of the world's best universities and thus they're supposedly of 'high potential'. There are other countries with similar schemes that allow people like that to start looking for work in the country without worrying about the whole work permit thing, so the UK is effectively competing with all these other countries for that same limited pool of talented people. So whether or not people would apply for these visa to come and work here depends a lot on how attractive the UK is as a destination for young people to find great opportunities: the UK economy is struggling at the moment. Just when we are starting to recover from the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent inflation soaring and that has affected so many businesses here. There is a cost of living crisis as ordinary folks see their household expenditure increase so much in the last few months - the price of everything from food to electricity to petrol has gone up. But to be fair, everyone around the world from Singapore to Sydney to Seattle are facing the same problems, so whilst things are bad in the UK now, Singaporeans are facing the same challenges at the same time too. So by that token, we're all facing the very same problems everywhere.
Q: Why did the UK government introduce this visa now?
A: Let's look at the maths: this is actually a pretty good scheme from a ROI (return on investment) point of view: you let another country's government spend all that money educating a young person until they can graduate; then you simply give them a visa to work in the UK whilst expecting them to pay for that privilege. When the moment they start earning money, you make them pay income tax. The ROI for the British government when they issue such a visa to a Singaporean graduate is fantastic by that token, contrast that to a very mediocre student in England from a poor family - the government would have subsidized and paid for so many aspect of this mediocre student's education. Given that this mediocre student is going to end up doing a low-skilled working class job that pays very little, then the ROI on this student is actually quite bad because this student will be paying very little or no tax given how little s/he earns. From an ROI perspective, ideally you want citizens who need almost nothing from the government as students and then go on to pay a lot of taxes when they become productive working adults. An extreme case of a poor ROI would be a severely disabled child who is simply unable to ever work but is entitled to all kinds of free hospital treatments as a result of his disability, in this case, the disabled child takes a lot from the government and gives nothing in return - in such cases, the government merely helps this family out because that's the right thing to do but in order to balance the books, the government needs more highly educated foreign graduates to come and work here under this new UK HPI visa scheme.
A: Most of the criticism has been associated with the fact that the majority, 20 of the 37 universities on this list has been from American universities and the rest are in Europe, Canada or Asia. There are no universities from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), Africa or Latin America. This doesn't mean that there are no good universities in South Asia, Africa or Latin America - I'm sure the UK government would point out that there's nothing to stop an Indian citizen from obtaining a a degree from NUS in Singapore, thus making himself eligible to come to the UK under this new via programme. I think the proof is in the pudding: if it can attract the right kind of people to come and work in the UK, then it is a success but we need to give it some time in the first instance to see if it will be a success or failure. They may expand the list of universities for this programme to include other great universities to attract even more talented people.
Q: Should young Singaporean graduates from NUS/NTU try this new programme?
A: I think it does give young Singaporean graduates from NUS/NTU a lot more options. Many young graduates from NUS/NTU never ever considered working in the UK before in the past because they just knew that it would have been impossible to get a work permit without enough work experience. What you really need as a young person just starting out with your working life after graduation is as many options as possible. Singapore isn't a small country with a population of 5.8 million but the UK is a much bigger country with a population of 68.5 million - now we can look at all kinds of statistics about the size of the UK economy vs that of Singapore but the bottom line is that being a much larger country, there are more companies in the UK, more employers, more jobs, more opportunities and when you are a young person looking for a new job, you want to have the luxury of considering as many options as possible rather than pick from a very short list. Imagine if you wished to pursue a career in computer games, this is a growing industry: how many potential employers are there in Singapore in this industry then? Whilst Singaporeans consume a huge number of computer games and spend a lot of money on it, most of the games from Call of Duty to Fortnite to Grand Theft Auto to League of Legends were made outside Singapore - there is a small number of computer games makers in Singapore but that list is very short indeed. Thus you have the choice: either forget your dreams of pursuing a career in this industry and settle for something else, or look for your dream job in the UK, where there is a much bigger computer games industry.
I'm not sure how many young people would have the guts to pick the latter over the former, but simply knowing that this option exists is good news for young graduates from Singapore. Staying with that example of the young graduate who was contemplating a career in computer games, s/he might have simply given up on that dream given how few options there were in Singapore for people working in that industry. Simply knowing that you can actually have the option to access jobs in the UK for that industry could help some young people keep their dreams alive. Thus there are two groups of people in Singapore who would want to take advantage of this HPI programme: the first would be those seeking careers in more niche industries, where they are faced with the difficult choice of giving up their dreams or doing something a lot more mainstream. The second would be those who are looking for a change of environment and do like the prospect of spending the next few days working in the UK - I read a post on Facebook by a Singaporean couple contemplating moving back to the UK from Singapore, having lived in both countries. For me, the one thing that was completely missing from that discussion was any mention the weather in Singapore because I really hate the weather in Singapore. Having had a taste of the tropics on my recent trip to Panama, I can safely conclude that moving to a cooler country is a major motivating factor for me to want to live in the UK instead of Singapore, however for that couple, this clearly wasn't a vital factor for them at all - everyone will have their own criteria when it comes to their ideals and dreams.
Q: How do I apply for this? Do I need an immigration consultant?
A: No, all the details about this new UK HPI visa scheme are in the public domain - they are published on the government's website and it is not like some kind of secret that you have to pay a lawyer to decipher for you! The key thing is whether or not you qualify for the visa and that's really straightforward: if you qualify, then it is just a matter of following through the process as clearly stated on the government's website, follow it methodically step by step and you can't fuck it up. If you can't even follow some instructions to guide you through an application process, then goodness me - how the fuck did you manage to graduate from one of the world's top universities? There are immigration lawyers and consultants to help people out when they have complex cases, they help you find a solution when there isn't an obvious solution like a visa that you qualify for. I have also seen cases where the applicant is not educated enough (or if they struggle with English) to fill up the forms themselves and thus they are paying someone else to handle their paperwork.
A: Firstly, the UK Home Office takes ages to process anything, so don't expect to get it processed quickly. In fact they are currently buried under a huge backlog of visas from Ukrainian refugees, so that has to take precedent. So if you're coming towards the end of your five year window period after your graduation, then you need to get that application in as soon as possible. You also need to think about your career plans - okay so you can look for a job in a city like London but do you know what kind of job you would like? You need to make concrete plans about what career path you wish to pursue and you can start contacting companies here in the UK before you even get your visa, to set up interviews the moment you arrive here so you can hit the ground running. You can also do a lot of networking online to speak to people here who are in the same industry. I think the worst thing you could do is turn up at Heathrow airport without a plan, imagining that the streets of London are paved with gold and that somehow you'll improvise in the absence of a plan. I need to warn you that this is a stressful process because the clock is ticking: you need to live and work in the UK for a total of five years before you can get your permanent leave to remain but this HPI visa gives you just two or three years max, so you are counting down the moment you arrive here, you have a limited amount of time to find a way to switch to another visa to make it to that five year mark. Be prepared to have a plan B (and C, D etc) if your plan A does not work out, be flexible and keep an open mind. This route could be very challenging so don't expect this to be the easier option.
So there you go, that's it from me on this new opportunity, what do you think? If you are eligible for this visa, would you consider taking this opportunity? If not, why not? Do you think this new scheme will be popular? If you have any other questions about this visa or working in the UK, you know what to do - leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
I'm not eligible for this visa, but I'm surprised it is the least controversial immigration law the UK has proposed. Even letting in HKers wasn't controversial either. Like is there really that much classism when it comes to immigration? I'm not surprised the working class don't want working class immigrants to enter the UK, but shouldn't they also be worried about skilled immigrants because that would take the better jobs they aspire to? In the US that is definitely the case, there is strict opposition to both unskilled and skilled immigration.
ReplyDeleteWell we used to take in loads of migrant workers from Eastern Europe who had the right to work in the UK regardless of whether they were educated or spoke English, but after Brexit they were shut out. So we needed a new policy to continue attracting more talented people to move here and work here - as I've explained the ROI on this scheme is really good because you let another country educate these people all the way till they're educated, then you just let them come and work in the UK and make them pay taxes once they start earning. Quite frankly, this didn't make the headlines here in the UK - the newspapers ignored it and I only covered it because I have always discussed immigration on my blog.
DeleteOh yeah I forget that Brexit was won by only a very slim majority, such that the remainers would support getting immigrants from elsewhere if the EU migrants are blocked off. Is there a serious labor shortage in the UK in certain sectors? I think you mentioned healthcare and education being two such fields.
DeleteIt's not just the remainers who are all for getting migrants from elsewhere but anyone who wants our health service to be able to function. Even those who are very anti-EU and pro-Brexit will want a doctor to be able to attend to them if they show up at a hospital with a heart attack or stroke - when it is a matter of life & death, you'll be amazed how quickly people put aside politics and become quite reasonable actually. I would love to sit at the A&E and wait for some old fart to be admitted with a heart attack or stroke and say, "you voted for Brexit, now we don't have enough doctors and nurses and you're going to die because of your politics, I hope it was worth it - any last words?" Yeah I'm so evil.
DeleteThere are massive shortages in healthcare & education - namely nurses and teachers because these two jobs share four things in common, namely:
1.The pay is terrible compared to other sectors.
2. The work is difficult (ie. it is a skilled job, you need qualifications, you can't just allow any idiot to work as a nurse or a teacher with no training at all).
3. The hours are long (teachers have an insane amount of marking, paperwork).
4. Nurses & teachers can earn more outside the UK, so they end up going to work in somewhere like Dubai or Australia.
That's why there's a dire, desperate shortage of teachers & nurses in the UK now for those 4 reasons. If not for the thousands of Filipino nurses working in the UK, we won't be able to keep the hospitals running. Filipino nurses are the backbone of British hospitals and in exchange, many of them have naturalized as British citizens.
The fact is the Filipinos are so desperately poor, working abroad like that is their ticket out of poverty. So in the 1990s, a Filipino mother would come to Singapore to work as a domestic helper to pay for her daughter's education. The daughter then goes to nursing college, qualifies as a nurse and then comes to the UK to work as a nurse - the daughter then sends back enough money to support her mother throughout her final years, so the mother can enjoy a very comfortable retirement after working for decades in Singapore as a maid. Hopefully, as a nurse, the daughter will be able to make sure that her children will have a decent education and can attain social mobility. It make have taken 3 generations but at least that Filipino family has finally attained some social mobility through this route (and they are the lucky ones).
DeleteOh wow I had no idea that the UK NHS had such a large foreign workforce. Here in America healthcare is a very protected field so aside from a few very highly qualified foreign doctors who are making 6 figures or more, the vast majority of the healthcare workforce is local. But then again, healthcare is generally unaffordable for the same reason, the government doesn't care if not everyone has access to healthcare. So even if there was a labor shortage to keep everyone healthy, it's not a big deal to them.
DeletePolitics aside, I'm surprised how the UK is very practical regarding many topics. A country where people are just like "we don't want to die for preventable disease, let's let in immigrants", that would be absolute utopia to an American. I also notice there's no debate on abortion/gun control/LGBTQ rights in the UK, and religion stays largely out of politics. It just makes me feel that UK politics is largely "impersonal" with regards to moral character. Everything is mostly about whether there's enough money to keep social services running without taxes being too high, which I absolutely love! Here in America we have people on Fox news and CNN arguing about social issues everyday rather than economic ones. In the UK people seem largely in agreement over social things. You yourself support the mainstream right-wing party without fear of being marginalized over being a gay Asian immigrant. In the US that would be very difficult to do.
Hi Amanda, a few points for you in response to what you wrote.
Delete1. The NHS workforce is completely reliant on foreign workers for the reasons I have cited above: long hours, terrible conditions, very poor pay etc. Only a Filipino would look at such a contract and think it is a good deal because it is still better than what they can earn in Manila. It's not just Filipinos but nurses from everywhere from Nepal to India to Romania working in our hospitals.
2. I don't actually support the mainstream right-wing party actually, my views on politics may be fairly right wing but that's mostly based on my views on the economy. There are two kinds of issues that determine where you sit on the political spectrum: economic issues (how much tax do you wanna pay to fund the government to run things like social services) and social issues (do you approve of gay marriage, abortion rights etc). On economic issues, I'm very right wing (ie. less tax please) but on social issues I'm on the furthest end of the left wing scale (ie. gay marriage, abortion rights for women etc). But when it comes to politics in the UK, it is very personality driven. I like the individual, not the party and I totally hate Boris Johnson for he is a total idiot. So by that token, he is the head of the Conservatives in the UK (for now) and thus I do not support them at all. If they get a new leader, then I may reconsider my stance.
Hmm, the UK is very liberal in using skilled immigrant labor for not quite minimum wage jobs. I suppose for both the immigrant and the UK it is a pretty good deal. In the US we do have a shortage of nursing home workers, but any immigration bill introduced to import foreign workers wouldn't survive. Sometimes I wonder how America even functions with such strict immigration laws....
DeleteOh I thought you used to support the Tories, unless that was when Theresa May and David Cameron were still in charge. It seems you're very libertarian, conservative for social spending but liberal for social issues. I'm kinda similar to you in that regard. I like how countries like Germany and Sweden have a lot of social spending, but I'm not sure if I could ever stomach their high level of taxes. Countries like Canada are decent without as high taxes. By the way, about Boris, can you believe he survived the vote of no confidence? I mean covid is kinda over. I don't like Boris but I do have to admit he wasn't as bad as Trump and the government is somewhat still functioning.
Here's the context for the UK labour market - it has always been very open, back when Britain had so many colonies, they had no qualms about drawing labour from the colonies to come and work in the UK. It wasn't seen as 'immigration' in those days when it was all part of the empire. Of course, the UK was completely complicit in the slave trade and slave owners did bring their slaves to the UK as well back in those days. Then in the 50s and 60s, due to an acute labour shortage, the UK once again turned to former colonies and invited thousands to come from former colonies - namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica etc to come and work here mostly in low-paid jobs. It's a very different approach to what the Scandinavian countries do: in Scandinavia, if they don't have enough nurses, they increase the pay of the nursing profession until locals change their minds and regard it as a very well paid profession. They throw money at it, as much money as it takes - money can change the perception easily. But in the UK, we turn to cheap foreign labour instead and get foreign workers in.
DeleteI don't support the Tories or Labour. I support individual politicians regardless of their political affiliation and actually, I supported May and Cameron but I really really really hate Johnson. I thought May was an honourable politician who was given a poisoned chalice and Cameron was good at first but took a massive gamble on Brexit and lost. But no, I categorically hate the Tories, like I can't stress how much I HATE them now because of Boris Johnson. It doesn't make me left wing either but that's the thing I hate about simplistic left/right wing two party systems. There are Republicans who are right wing in their thinking but couldn't bring themselves to support Trump because he's a monster. Likewise, even if I am right wing in my political views, I still think that Boris Johnson is a fucking disaster, a total moron and I really really hate him. The government here is functioning in spite of Johnson, not because of him.
Further to what I wrote above about drawing labour from poorer countries, the UK did that a lot when it was in the EU, especially since the wages in the UK are a lot higher than all those Eastern European countries from Poland to Bulgaria to Romania.
DeleteOh really I didn't know that. I thought in the days of the British empire they would restrict immigration to the UK because they were classist/racist. I mean they weren't exactly very nice colonists. But it does remind me of the Windrush generation and how open borders that was to let Caribbeans immigrate freely. Scandinavia seems to have the right idea though, but in their country they're more egalitarian than the UK. Also it seems Scandinavia doesn't like low skilled immigrants because there isn't much of a place in their society for them. Because they threw money at the problem many jobs need high skills to do so a low skilled immigrant has more trouble integrating themselves into Sweden than the UK. But as they say, you can't please everyone in making political decisions. It's all a big balancing act.
DeleteAhh okay so you're anti-Boris. I remember a time when you really hated Jeremy Corbyn because he just lacked charisma as a leader, even though on social issues you're more Labour than Tory. But yeah it kinda makes me wonder if a political system with several political parties like Belgium or Netherlands is better than the two party system in the UK/US. There's more gradations in whose needs are represented.
What I found funny about Brexit was I thought the people voted for Brexit because they didn't like the cheap labor coming from poor EU countries, but now they're just replacing poor Europeans with poor non-Europeans instead because they have to keep the NHS and schools running. But I don't think anybody really thought it through when they voted for Brexit. They probably just thought "I don't like Brussels telling me what to do" instead of "I want to kick out a large percentage of the NHS workforce." Like who knows, maybe 10 years down the road the Brexiteers decide they don't like the large global immigrant population in the UK and agree to either pay more taxes for the NHS or downsize it.
During the days of the empire, they didn't need to restrict immigration to the UK because travel was a lot more expensive and difficult then. Only the very rich had the means to visit another country. I am currently planning a summer holiday that would involve four countries and okay, even if these countries are right next to each other in Europe - that would have been impossible a hundred years ago for most people as it would have been prohibitively expensive to do such a trip but now, I just look up the flights on Skyscanner and will then find a nice place on AirBNB before negotiating my way around it by rail and local buses (since public transport is so reliable and cheap in Europe). The chances of thousands of migrants from India showing up in London in the 1930s was zero because only the very richest elite from India in those days could afford to travel to London and if you were really that rich, then the British would accept you regardless of your skin colour or nationality.
DeleteWith the Windrush generation, to encourage people to make that trip to the UK, the government actually helped these people with their passage to the UK in terms of offering heavily subsidized passages (on ships) from places like Jamaica to the UK. Without having provided cheap and affordable transport to these migrants, most would have never been able to afford that long journey.
The Scandinavian model isn't perfect either - you need bus drivers, but nobody wants to become a bus driver so you throw money at it until a bus driver earns as much as an engineer or a journalist. You solve one problem you create a new one: the teacher says to the kids in school, "you need to study hard for your exams". The kids reply, "no we don't, the bus driver who drives us to school earns as much as you teacher, so even if we fail all our exams, we just need to get a bus driver's license and we still earn as much as the kids who did well for those exams. Nah teacher you're wrong, I don't need to study."
I am a voter who will give any politician the chance to win my vote by being charming, convincing, impressive, trustworthy and brilliant. Both Corbyn and Johnson suck and scored 0/10 with me when it comes to any of that, they performed as badly as Trump did. You can't get any fairer than that - I think that tying yourself to any one party and wearing a label like Republican or Democrat almost forces you to endorse a terrible candidate; this was indeed the case with Republicans who found it hard to support Trump.
As for the NHS, if the Brexiteers who vote to downside the NHS then that's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Brexiteers tend to be poor and would never have the resources to go private if they desperately need healthcare, they are the ones who show up at A&E requiring treatment on the NHS and you have to wonder: how far would you go to make a political point? Are you willing to downsize the NHS only to then die in the waiting room of the A&E because you've kicked out all the non-British foreigners working there? Is there any point in this kind of politics, where you cut off your nose to spite your face?
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DeleteThe fact is pro-Brexit politicians told so many lies and the idiotic British public believed those lies. It's so similar to the way Trump just told lie after lie after lie, offering 'alternative facts' and fake news because he knew his supporters would gladly hear what they wanted to hear. It's the same bullshit going on here - the politicians lie about how great the NHS would be after Brexit whilst they have no clue about how to properly fund it or keep the hospitals open after we lose vital staff because of Brexit. The voters of this country are hideously stupid - but then again, the US did vote for Trump and believed his lies. Boris Johnson is like Trump in that he gladly lies knowing that the majority of the British public are just too fucking stupid to know the difference between the truth and his lies. This reminds me of when my nephew was like 5 years old, he asked his mother to take him to do this gimmicky amphibious tour (it's a boat-bus) in Singapore which was really expensive and really for tourists. So his mother lied to him, she said, "it's only for older children, there's an age limit but when you're old enough I'll take you there, okay?" He actually believed her and she gave me that look like, "see? I'm such a good actor." It was done with the belief that the truth would have left him dissatisfied with the answer ('mummy doesn't wanna spend that money on this') and she hoped that he would forget about it in due course. Politicians are just the same, they lie to the public and hope that they get distracted by the next celebrity scandal as the majority of the public are just plain stupid.
DeleteOh yeah I forget that nowadays we take buses, trains, and planes for granted to transport us that far. There is only so much a person can travel on foot or by boat. Also not to mention how unsafe travel was back then because of how slow it was, people just didn't risk it. Nowadays in the US we have a lot of people showing up at the Mexico border wanting to apply for asylum, and the US doesn't want to devote resources to the courts to process all of them, let alone house these people until their cases are heard.
DeleteWow I didn't know that about the windrush generation. The UK was complicit in the immigration? They must've had a real labor shortage at the time.
Haha you're right, the problem with any society when all the jobs are paid equally well regardless of how difficult they are is that people will tend to only do the easy or glamorous jobs. But then wouldn't they just lower the salary of a bus driver if too many people want to be bus drivers and not that many want to be mechanics? It's supply and demand that constantly rebalances itself. Here in the US I recently met up with three guys who all worked in construction who were complaining they can't find laborers for $25/hour, which is double the national minimum wage in America. The jobs they were advertising for were for bricklaying or cabinet installations. But I suppose it's a job without much advancement and doesn't come with health insurance so there weren't many takers.
Lol if they die in the waiting room, then they can't vote in the next election! But what surprises me about UK politics is how people speak of "the grey vote", meaning that older people form a very large voting bloc because they're more likely to vote than young people. But it also means that policies tend to skew towards helping the elderly rather than the young simply because older people vote more.
Hahaha your sister pulled a fast one on her son. It's true that the voting public don't hold their attention for very long. Even democrats here tell lies. Biden told people on the campaign trail he would forgive student debt, but 2 years later he can't even get congress to agree on forgiving $10k in student debt, when originally he promised $50k per borrower or all of it. Are voters holding him accountable for that? Not really. But I think there has to be something to be done about skyrocketing college prices though. UK tuition for locals is not nearly as bad as $50k/year at my school and other private universities.
The cost of traveling has come right down - if I wanted to take a trip from London to Singapore, an average price of an economy ticket would be £450 off-peak but more like £650 peak season. We then measure that against my monthly salary and you will conclude that whilst that's a big ticket item for me, it is still a very affordable percentage of my salary since I do earn quite a lot more than £650 a month. In the past, a trip from Singapore to London would be the equivalent of 100 years' worth of earnings for your average person in Singapore back then for a combination of two factors: people were a lot poorer and travel was a lot more expensive in those days. This made long haul travel impossible, just out of reach for the vast majority of ordinary people, so the governments weren't that worried about being flooded with migrants. It's a different story today.
DeleteIn the post war years (50s, 60s, up to the early 70s), many European countries were so desperate for migrant worker that they were not only 'complicit' in facilitating this migration, they were literally begging people to come and work in their countries. The UK drew migrant workers from former British colonies, as did France and Germany, having had no former colonies, was so desperate they went to Turkey and recruited labourers from there in such big numbers that the Turkish are now the biggest ethnic minority in Germany today.
It's got nothing to do with racism per se, you shouldn't assume that just because these countries let in huge amounts of black & Asian migrants that they're not racist, but simply these migrant workers were seen as a temporary fix as they were on terrible contracts, being paid very little to do the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. Not every country wanted to do the Scandinavian approach which was to keep raising the salaries of people like bus drivers to the point where locals are happy to driver buses for a living - that's why your bus driver in Finland is white and Finnish, but you'll rarely find a white bus driver in the UK. Even places like Singapore and Hong Kong have recruited bus drivers from China with the same approach in mind - find cheap foreign migrant workers to do the jobs and keep the salaries low, rather than raise their pay to attract the locals to do that kind of job.
The situation in Scandinavia is messed up to say the least, I'm not holding it up as some kind of Utopian perfect socialist solution. I have friends in places like Sweden and Finland who have either left or want to leave because of the way socialism has messed up the labour market. The thing about people who work in jobs like transport is that they are not stupid - they know they're only commanding such a high salary because of the distortion of the labour market by the government's desire to avoid using cheap foreign workers. So they form unions and if will go on strike whenever the government refuses to give in to their demands - London is paralyzed by a public transport strike this week. The rail workers are on strike as they demand more money and the government said no, what you're asking for is unreasonable and we can't justify such a huge pay rise. So they said, give us what we want or we will all go on strike - so there's a massive strike this week. Such is the problem when the unions get too strong; so the moment you talk about lowering the salaries of bus drivers, then they will all go on strike, creating chaos for the people dependent on public transport until you give in to their demands. The Singaporean approach is an alternative of course that avoids that. The bus drivers are recruited from China on contracts which specifically state, "if you dare to strike, you will be sacked and deported swiftly." This actually did happen before - the workers tried to strike and the government kicked them out. Now you may think that's harsh (they were being treated very poorly by their employers) but there is no middle ground. Either you take that harsh Singaporean approach to show them who is boss so they do as they are told, or you have the European problem of bus drivers earning a lot and going on strike if you don't give them what they want.
DeleteThe thing to do of course, IMHO, is to sack them all and use technology as a solution - we can use driverless trains and buses in the long run; it requires a huge amount of investment in the technology upon adaptation, but then you solve the problem; ie. you're no longer held hostage by greedy transport workers who threaten you with strikes and you're weaned off this dependency on cheaper low-paid migrant workers from very poor countries.
As for Biden & student debt, it's not exactly a lie per se: he knows he would never be able to approve the bill in congress, so he can promise anything he wants but when congress doesn't approve the bill, then he can say, "see? I tried to forgive student debt but the way American democracy works, we need to get it through the system and it is the Republicans blocking the bill - not my fault, I tried to keep my promise, I want to deliver but you can blame the Republicans for blocking it." So it's not a lie per se, it's like me saying to my nephew, when it snows in Singapore, I'll buy you a pair of skis and we'll go skiing on Bukit Timah hill - the promise is bullshit of course because it is based on "when it snows in Singapore", we both know that will never happen so I can promise whatever I can't and I can't be accused of lying because I've set out a certain set of conditions that must happen before I am obliged to keep my word. Biden is doing the same thing. It's what all politicians do - whereas for Trump and Boris, they just outright lie, lie, lie because the public are too stupid to know the difference. This is how stupid the public is: A&W tried to launch a burger in the 1980s called the 1/3 pounder to rival McDonald's famous 1/4 pounder - now obviously, that's far more beef in 1/3 pound but the burger didn't take off, why? When they did a lot of consumer research, they realized that a lot of dumb folks out there thought that 1/4 was more than 1/3 because 4 is a bigger number than 3. That's how fucking stupid the voting public is. https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions
DeleteAnd that's why politicians get away with so many lies - the average person in the street isn't educated enough to figure out a lot of things (such as fractions, in the case of the burger). May I point out that in your case Amanda, you are unaware of the history of immigration to the West, the exploitation of cheap migrant worker in Europe as well as the role of the unions (oh and how Biden technically didn't lie, he just made a promise he didn't have to keep). You are well educated of course but you have gaps in your knowledge. Now if someone like you can have gaps in your knowledge, think about how many more gaps there are in the minds of your average bus driver - remember, it's one person one vote, whether you're a genius or a bus driver. And that's why politicians get away with it.
DeleteHmm, I'm on the fence about unions for unskilled workers vs. automation. On the one hand, if they're providing a valuable service, then why not pay them? On the other hand, one can argue they've almost formed a racket such that they're immune to market pressure and performance incentives, which isn't fair because in every other job doesn't have that privilege. On automation, oh boy I actually work somewhat in that. Rather than automating blue-collar jobs, I develop algorithms to replace white-collar jobs. I work in "automatic design", where using math we can design parts of a new train using an AI instead of getting a human designer to do it. But for me I just approach the task as a scientist seeing if it can even be done in the first place and what are the problems preventing us from doing so. It's not my job to think of the social cost of implementing such a software, but if I had to think of the social impact, on the one hand we'd get better trains and more people can travel around faster, but on the other hand you'd have temporary unemployment as train designers suddenly have to learn how to use artificial intelligence just to keep up in the labor market. And many train designers can't even code, let alone learn A.I, which is a branch of applied mathematics. But one could argue, why stop the march of progress? There are people waiting for life-saving treatments that don't exist, and will never exist if we avoid every new technology. Also without things like zoom and the internet, controlling future pandemics would have been way worse without mass communications, even if they put a lot of post office workers in the unemployment line when email was first invented. I suppose it's really difficult being a politician nowadays trying to regulate new technology because innovation goes so fast. It's hard to make sure the benefits go to everyone rather than profit only a small group.
DeleteHahaha so the trick was you basically implied to your nephew it wasn't your responsibility to make it snow on top of buying him some skiis. Cleverrr! But I'm not getting the feeling that Biden is really blaming the republicans per se. Some people have written opinion pieces about how a one-time forgiveness is not sustainable because the costs aren't being brought down, hence future borrowers are still being created with the burdensome costs. There has to be some kind of price control on top of debt forgiveness.
Haha true, politics is messy. Heck even politicians hire teams of people to research certain issues before they make a decision on it. The average voter does not have such resources or time.
On the topic of unions & strikes, it is all about balance. The Singaporean model is one extreme where you take migrant workers from a poor country like China and threaten them with immediate dismissal + deportation if they dare to utter the word strike and if someone tries to push the limits, you make an example of them. The UK rail strike is an example of when the unions go too far and deliberately hold the entire country hostage by striking. There's always a happy medium where the workers have some right and are paid a decent wage but they don't have the power to demand a completely ridiculous pay package with the threats of endless strikes until you give in to them. Find me a country that has gotten this balance right - it's always one extreme or the other.
DeleteAs for politics, yup Biden didn't lie but he merely made a promise that he didn't have to keep because he would push the debt forgiveness through if the Republicans wouldn't stand in his way in Congress - and of course, the same way I know it would never snow in Singapore, he knows they will never get on board so he could promise whatever he wanted to woo his voters knowing it is technically speaking, not a lie but simply a promise he doesn't have to keep because of the context. That's not the same as lying.