Re: Brexit discussion
 

It hasn't stopped entirely but the drop is very steep / drastic. I think that the TFR is down to 1.8 now and the replacement rate needs to be above 1.91 if memory serves so for now it is fine as there is a large(r) number of child bearing aged women to have those 1-2 kids (as opposed to the fewer who needed to have like 5 or 6) but when those numbers drop back down and the population shrinks...then what? It won't be too long before that happens.

One other thing...looking at your sidebar where it says that you are 61...so you would have been born in 1957 or so, correct?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41685693

According to variable and different methodology, people born now, or even when your life is expected to perish will be at least 15 years longer. Sporadically the age of retirement / pension availability has grown but ultimately if people live longer and longer, less and less pay into the system and the tax revenues fall then...

As it is now, there is like a ratio of 1:1 for worker and retiree, right?

Also the bigger question is, who will do the actual work? In healthcare and social care / mobility hospices etc, technology will help a lot, but in time...in the mean time? As Britain ends up with so many seniors who will actually look after them? (If money wasn't even an issue?)

Re: Brexit discussion
 

TFR was 1.79 in 2016 (latest stats available).

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...enceofmotheruk

1956, so I should (on average) live to 82 (another 21 years, or 16 years of pension for 49 years of working)

Well, it's fiscal madness for anyone to expect to live longer and expect the same pension, so working for 40-45 years and expecting a pension to pay out for 30-35 years isn't going to happen - it's already started, as my pension age has gone from 65 to 66, and my wife's from 60-66; I would imagine in about 35-40 years time, that will increase to around 70 (it's planned to rise to 68 between 2037 and 2039). On the bright side, you will (on average) be living longer, so swings and roundabouts.

The FT forecasts there will be 2.9 workers for every 1 retiree by 2050. https://www.ft.com/content/fda8675a-...a-00144feab7de

Re: Brexit discussion
 

IMO, 2.9 to 1 in 2050 is not too bad, that is also accounting for a significant chunk of old people dying by then, too though.

It is indeed hit and miss but one thing that is being factored in is that people are incrementally seeing their age of retirement increasing.

With the FT, is it factoring the UK without being a member of the EU though only as that is where I can see a lot of the LF (that would pay for the retirement fund(s)) dissipating into nothing. This is where I can see a major headache coming up and if the UK does indeed leave the EU within a year or two, I can see the population plummeting.

This is where I can see everything going wrong as per population actuaries.

For example, Japan has a plummeting population and they only allow 50 000 people to migrate into the country every year but people who are elderly there are dying off at a pretty steep rate now. Even though their medical technology is the greatest in the world and advances at the greatest rate those elder generations are going to die some point and as that happens the numbers at which they habit the land are going to fall off a cliff.

Btw I was wondering if it was 1956 or 1957 only 1957 is apparently meant to be the happiest year on record:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...year-ever.html

Though that would likely be for people living then, not born then.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...year-ctx8whpgw

Happy times!

Re: Brexit discussion
 

There's an interesting poll out from YouGov for the BBC on Englishness. One question threw up answers that I didn't expect - was England better in the past, best now or will be better in the future?

For better in the past, you see 35% of remain voters saying yes against 64% of leave voters. What stood out though is that 20% of remain voters said the country will be better in the future vs. 15% of leave voters. This is the opposite of what I would have expected.

Here is the BBC summary - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44142843
Here is the underlying data - https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.ne...or_website.pdf see the bottoms of page 4, 5 and 6 for the results of that question

Re: Brexit discussion
 

What is striking Jon is that regardless of Remain or Leave, 4 out out 5 people think the country will be worse in future. It is weird though that Leave voters are even more pessimistic.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

Yeah, that is kind of depressing to be honest!

Re: Brexit discussion
 

I saw the news item, and what was depressing was the focus on Englishness over Britishness - there were factual inaccuracies, such as mentioning English History not being taught at Cambridge, when in fact British history is part of the History Tripos.

I am proud to be British, and think our best days are ahead of us, but, like a lot of non-English Brits, get peeved over our apparent non-existence when things like this are discussed.

Remember, it was the British Empire, ruled over by Great Britain, not the English Empire - people hark back in longing for something that didn’t exist.

(speaking as some who has lived in England for 3/4’s of my life, served in the Armed Forces, and has 2 offspring born and bred in Yorkshire)

Re: Brexit discussion
 

Absolute rubbish. You have not asked all leave voters how they feel so no it is not that at all and one poxy poll taken by the BBC does not speak for 17.4 Million people, but wow, a BBC poll, they're really reliable.

This leave voter is not pessimistic about leaving. I am more pessimistic the longer we stay in the corrupted pile of garbage.

---------- Post added at 22:09 ---------- Previous post was at 22:05 ----------

* What part of leaving the EU in it's entirety did you not understand ? :rolleyes:

And YES they are banal questions.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

It's not a BBC poll. YouGov did it for the BBC. The BBC isn't a polling company,.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

Polls don't ask everybody as that would be a referendum or census and cost too much. They try and ask a representative sample of the population.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

I'm 64, lived and worked in the UK all my life. I have never ever* been asked to take part in one of these 'representative sample' type polls.

I guess they're really 'selective' on who they think a representative sample is . .


* I'm not including the countless silly and inane 'polls' that many websites ask you to take part in. If I'm browsing a site selling mock tudor bathroom fittings I have no interest about whether James Brown wrote better songs than Lionel Richie :D:D

Re: Brexit discussion
 

Either way - the findings are utter nonsense, don't trust them whatsoever.

Only one poll mattered and that was the official one, almost two years ago now.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

Goes to show though, you can have a pretty good relationship with people from Lancashire / English etc - who says that we can't all assimilate? ;)

Re: Brexit discussion
 

For the most part, you are generally grateful that you do not receive mass amounts of calls / mailing / literature all day every day asking for your "opinion" on stuff after you do it for like the first day so be grateful. I have been asked to participate in the odd survey system and even though I will not get SPAM as I was invited to join, and I did I will never see it as anything but.

Yeah to try get an accurate gauge of the public I sense they try make it as representative of the voters but they don't usually account for how "likely" they are to vote in the first place. That is why voter enthusiasm is so much more important than just a random selection of folks based on ideological representation. Even at that, they have to try estimate what the % levels of every party and ideology that is likely to vote as a total proportionate amount of the vote, which is not always easy to do. Then, they need to replicate that as closely as they can into a small sample size. It is not as easy as it sounds - and why there is usually a margin of error of like 4 to 6%. (Sometimes more, but that is unusual).

Yeah, that takes out almost all "representative" mirroring of the electorate out of it.

If it is an open poll, for example I am pretty sure if you found the right site (Daily Express for example) you could get 90+% of readers to vote yes on anything anti-EU. If you asked Femen activists whether women should ever wear anything from the waist up I am sure the numbers would be pretty high against the idea.

Some sites require a log in verification that one user has one vote and a bunch of them (like broadsheet papers) require a subscription, and of those some are so methodical that they also have their own polling firm, on top of that. That makes it at least a little more accurate.

Though as and when there is a balanced viewership there is likely to be a more accurate representation of the public - unless it is over something so obvious as say...nazis and Hitler. Then you really have to get into the alt style sites like Stormfront to find anything positive, the other way.

Re: Brexit discussion
 

So leaving ALL EU institutions entirely would be the only Brexit you would accept and there's no benefit to any of them? There are a number of EU agencies that non-EU countries are also members of such as Aviation Safety, Food Safety and Environment agencies. Would you welcome joining as a non-EU country?