Monday, 12 May 2025

CARE CRISIS AFTER IMMIGRANT CARE WORKER BAN

12 May 2025

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/social-care-visa-immigration-government-b2749180.html

Bold talk on immigration, but behind the numbers lies a quiet cruelty: the government has chosen to cut the care workforce — the least likely to protest, and the most vital to our dignity.


1. Overview of the Policy Change

The UK government, under Sir Keir Starmer, has introduced major immigration reforms targeting the care sector. At the heart of these changes is the decision to close off the Health and Care Worker visa route to new overseas applicants. This visa had previously allowed care providers to recruit non-UK staff to help fill critical gaps in the workforce. The new policy forms part of Labour's broader ambition to reduce legal migration figures and push employers to hire and train British workers instead. But critics argue this comes at a cost the care system cannot afford.


2. Impact on the Social Care Sector

Social care in the UK is already fragile, marked by chronic understaffing, rising costs, and a long-standing recruitment crisis. In 2023–24 alone, around 105,000 international workers were hired to support adult care — a vital contribution that helped reduce vacancy rates slightly. Removing access to the overseas visa route now risks reversing this progress. The government’s own estimates suggest there will be at least 7,000 fewer care workers. Meanwhile, the broader sector faces over 131,000 vacancies, with projections indicating the need for an additional 540,000 staff by 2040. Providers warn that the gap will be unfillable without continued access to international labour.


3. Reactions from Sector Leaders

Care leaders have sounded the alarm. Dr Jane Townson, head of the Homecare Association, called the policy "a brutal reality", warning that more homecare providers will close. She argues that the government’s failure to consult frontline professionals, coupled with rising employer costs and underfunding, will leave elderly and disabled people without safe and dignified care. Nadra Ahmed of the National Care Association compared the situation to the post-Brexit collapse of care resilience. She even questioned whether the government was deliberately running the sector into the ground in order to pave the way for nationalisation - an unusual criticism aimed at a Labour government.


4. Broader Criticism of Government Strategy

Critics describe the government’s approach as “whack-a-mole” - constantly reacting to crises without long-term strategy. Lucinda Allen of the Health Foundation said the policy demonstrates the government’s “limited understanding” of the care system’s structure, financing, and needs. With no new funding or incentives to recruit domestic workers, and with rising wage and insurance obligations for employers, care companies are left exposed. Unison's general secretary, Christina McAnea, noted that both the NHS and social care would have collapsed years ago without foreign staff, and warned the new policy dangerously ignores this reality.


5. Government’s Justification

Ministers defend the move by pointing to national migration figures and the need to train a domestic workforce. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said employers should not depend on low-paid migration but instead improve pay and training for local workers. The government expects the changes to cut net migration by 50,000 per year. However, no replacement plan has been offered to address the immediate gap in care provision, nor any funding pledge to support workforce development - raising fears of a looming collapse in services already stretched to the brink.


6. Glossary of Terms

Health and Care Worker Visa: A visa introduced in 2021 allowing non-UK citizens to work in health and social care roles.

Net Migration: The difference between people entering and leaving a country within a given time period.

Whack-a-mole approach: A term for tackling individual problems as they arise without addressing root causes or creating long-term solutions.

Nationalisation: Bringing a sector or industry under state ownership or control, often following the collapse or failure of private provision.


7. Conclusion

The Labour government’s decision to close off the care visa route may achieve a reduction in migration figures, but at what cost? The policy risks accelerating the breakdown of a care system already on its knees. Without urgent investment, planning, or a viable domestic recruitment strategy, providers warn that the elderly and vulnerable will be the ones who suffer. Many now fear this is not just a policy misstep, but a fundamental failure to recognise the scale of the crisis. Social care, once again, appears to be treated as a political afterthought — until it’s your own family who needs it.

8. Policy review: This is a Numbers Cynically Targeting Care Workers

The decision to target care workers within this immigration crackdown appears not just careless, but calculated. Among the various migrant labour categories in the UK - from construction engineers to agricultural pickers, from software developers to domestic staff in wealthy households - the government has chosen to hit one of the least politically powerful groups: overseas care workers.

The rationale is brutally simple. Ministers need to bring down net migration figures. But they must do so in a way that avoids backlash from business leaders, the middle classes, or university sectors. Foreign cleaners in elite homes? Untouchable. Skilled tech workers or logistics drivers? Too essential. But care workers - largely invisible, working-class, often racialised - present a soft target. Their clients, elderly and disabled people, don’t typically march on Westminster.

Yet demand for care is inelastic. When providers shut, when workers are priced out or cut off, people don’t suddenly stop needing help with bathing, mobility, or dementia support. The result is simple economics: prices will rise. What we call “closures” will in practice become a dual-tier system, where the affluent continue receiving care - at a premium - and others are left to struggle, deteriorate, rely on overwhelmed family members or choose to send their elderly offshore to foreign lands with inexpensive high quality care facilities such as are found in Southeast Asia.

This policy, then, is not just short-sighted. It is structurally cruel. It chooses political optics over societal function. It speaks to an underlying cynicism in the current government: win points on migration, even if it means letting the vulnerable slip through the cracks.

The deeper fear, voiced quietly in sector circles, is whether this is part of a longer-term game: allow the private market to collapse under labour scarcity and cost pressure, then Labour intervenes - not out of compassion, but to rebuild it as a nationalised or outsourced hybrid model under stricter state control. Alternatively, the sector gets slowly financilised i.e. slowly falls into the hands of private or quoted equity for example REITS. If true, we are not witnessing a policy failure, but a slow, deliberate dismantling, absent a strategy of compassion for a growing section of the population.


References:

  • The Independent, 11 May 2025
  • Skills for Care, Workforce Reports 2024
  • The Health Foundation
  • Financial Times
  • Unison Press Briefing

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WHO'S KIDDING WHO IN UKRAINE

12 May 2025

US arms stores in Europe to be tferred to Ukraine.

us-approves-german-transfer-of-125-gmlrs-rockets-and-100-patriot-missiles-to-ukraine

Kyiv Post

Both sides know that the failure of negotiations will keep the parties on the battlefields.


1. Introduction: Arms to Ukraine, Again
On 11 May 2025, the United States approved the transfer of 125 GMLRS rockets and 100 Patriot missiles to Ukraine. These weapons are being supplied from U.S. military stockpiles in Germany, not the U.S. mainland, making the logistics swift and efficient. The move fits a broader strategy: fast-tracking arms to Ukraine through already-positioned reserves in Europe, while maintaining the appearance of hands-off diplomacy.


2. Strategic Co-ordination: NATO’s Role and Washington’s Hand
Although Washington continues to style itself as a mediator, this transfer of arms reflects tightly coordinated efforts with NATO partners in Europe. The U.S. is using its forward-deployed munitions to bolster Ukraine’s capabilities while avoiding the political heat of a fresh supply chain from American soil. With European leaders now calling Russia to a cease fire from tiday Monday 12 May, the timing of this arms transfer is provocative. 


3. Russia’s Response: A Mirror Move in Istanbul, all-out war in Ukraine
Has Russia deduced that this is a ruse? In a diplomatic counterstroke mirroring Kiev's, it has invited Ukraine to resume negotiations under the Istanbul framework, proposing a monitored ceasefire to halt fighting, followed by more detailed talks on a long-term European security architecture. Will both sides, with their negotiating teams, make it to Istanbul this Thursday? Rather than de-escalation, the West's ceasefire proposal seems temporary or fraudulent, consisting of a tactical arms dump and re-org of Ukrainian positions. Russia seems to have long anticipated such a tactic as it has built two enormous new armies just outside Ukraine and is now referring to the conflict as all-out war rather than a "special military operation".


4. Gaslighting or Just Gaming?
Does the West truly believe it can gaslight Putin into thinking these weapons transfers represent anything other than preparation for a new phase of war? Equally, one has to wonder whether Putin himself believes that a return to Istanbul would yield a credible pathway to peace.  With NATO escalation on one side and Russia's military expansion on the other, neither party appears genuinely committed to the type of diplomatic breakthrough that could end the war "on just and lasting terms".


5. Enter Trump: The Waiting Game and the MAGA Doctrine
Amid the choreography, Donald Trump remains in the wings, formely campaigning on promises to end foreign wars "in a day", now focused on America’s twin deficits, tariffs and trade deals. He may have supported Ukraine's latest call for a ceasefire, or he may seem to dither, but could it be Trump the businessman watching, alert, ready to seize on passing diplomatic or military opportunities to "stop the dying" as they arise? Whether by pressure, bluff or deal-making, he wants to clear the stage and concentrate on his core project: Make America Great Again.


6. Conclusion: Tactical Peace, Strategic War
This latest transfer of arms from U.S. stores in Europe to that curs'ed country is not a sign of peace, but of pre-positioned escalation. It is tactical diplomacy at best, a sleight of hand that reinforces the battlefield while speaking the language of ceasefire. Behind every Patriot missile and rocket launcher is a wager that the war will continue until one side declares military victory over the other, or until some combination of stronger power and common sense forces a peace. Either way, we are not there yet, the cesspit in the middle of Europe that is Ukraine today, continues to bubble away and it's the same in the world's other hot spots, where we also remain on paths to World War 3.


7. Glossary of Terms

GMLRS - Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. A long-range precision strike system used by NATO to hit strategic targets far behind enemy lines.

Patriot missilePhased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target. A defensive missile system used to shoot down aircraft, drones and incoming missiles.

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A military alliance of Western countries committed to collective defence.

Stockpile - Pre-positioned military reserves, often stored abroad for rapid deployment during conflict.

CeasefireAn agreed pause in combat operations, sometimes temporary, often used to explore negotiations.

Istanbul negotiations - Diplomatic talks hosted in Turkey in 2022, seen as a reference point for possible future peace frameworks.

Gaslighting - Manipulating someone into doubting their reality. In this context, pretending to seek peace while fuelling war.

Sunk costs - Resources already spent and unrecoverable, such as troops, funds, and political investment in a war.

MAGA - Make America Great Again. Trump’s slogan signalling nationalism, anti-globalism, and economic revivalism.

Tactical diplomacy - Short-term, opportunistic foreign policy, used to manipulate the timing and optics of conflict or negotiations.

SMO Special military operation - a precise, tactical non-aggressive mission (contrast with full-scale war) framed as a defensive and necessary intervention under international law required to protect Donbas Russians from a Nazi-style regime in Kiev.

War - a larger existential confrontation between Russia (and its allies?) and America / NATO with increased risks. This prepares  domestic and global audiences for a longer harder struggle with escalation that may require greater military, industrial, and societal mobilisation.


[END]

Sunday, 11 May 2025

AMERICA'S TWIN DEFICITS AND TRUMP'S MAGA VISION

10 May 2025

An Updated Look at America's Twin Deficits

An earlier analysis has been updated, this post can now look more specifically at how the United States might address its growing twin deficits - the fiscal deficit and the trade deficit - to "make america great again" and achieve Trump's vision.


1. Understanding the Problem is Difficult

  • For non-economists, it's hard to understand the root causes of the twin deficits.
  • It's even harder to grasp what the government might be trying to do about them.
  • And harder still to identify the real-world obstacles to implementing any corrective strategy.
  • Nevertheless, let's make the effort, choices remain, and the right ones could delay Western decline and forestall the day when Chinese military parades march through Western capitals.

2. The Problem: Trade and Currency Pressure

The scenario: America’s trade deficit stands at around 7% of GDP, debt-to-GDP is north of 120%. The cause of America's problems lies in these twin deficits and the dollar's reserve status. 

Eventually, lenders will step back, debt monetisation will send interest rates to the moon, interest payments will gobble up all government revenues,  the currency will collapse, hyperinflation will destroy the economy and everyone's savings will be lost. 

For the moment, we are watching a slow collapse in the world's confidence in America, but a tipping point will be reached, then there'll be a sudden, unexpected and precipitous collapse in the economy, unemployment and inflation will take off. 

Sounds dramatic? This is how all empires decline and burn out.

More precisely,
  • Reducing the trade deficit to, say, 3% would help limit borrowing and stabilise interest rates.
  • But it would also reduce global demand for dollars.
  • The dollar, possibly overvalued by as much as 60%, would weaken.
  • Capital inflows would slow.
  • Asset prices would fall.
  • That would not make the president or his programme popular among the donor class.

3. MAGA vs the Donor Class

  • Trump is caught politically between two groups:
    • The MAGA base who want re-industrialisation and jobs.
    • The wealthy donors who want asset prices and dollar supremacy preserved.
  • To reconcile the two, the US might:
    • Pressure allies to buy Treasuries.
    • Raise tariffs.
    • Demand allies buy more US goods in exchange for protection.
    • Force companies to relocate production to the "flyover states".
  • But re-shoring means painful supply chain disruptions, as we saw during COVID.

4. Fiscal Choices and the Return of Austerity

  • To balance the books, the US must choose between
  • Borrowing more when each dollar yields less than a dollar in return is a losing proposition.
  • That brings the “A” word for austerity back to the centre of the debate.

5. Strategic Retrenchment

  • If foreign trade shrinks and the dollar declines:
    • Fewer global shipping routes need defending.
    • Foreign military commitments can be cut.
    • Domestic welfare and order becomes more important than global projection.

6. Ending Wars of Choice

  • If you want to avoid chaos at home due to austerity, then keep social protections in place.
  • That requires scaling back foreign adventures.
  • The era of expensive, unnecessary “wars of choice” must end.

7. The Lobbies Will Not Like It

  • The military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and globalist ideologues won’t accept any of this quietly.
  • But if America is to survive socially and economically, it must:
    • Retreat selectively,
    • Rebuild industry,
    • Practise fiscal realism.
  • The signs of collapse are there today. It may take years but once it begins - reluctance to lend a severe spike in interest rates - the collapse in confidence followed by withdrawal of support by the bond markets, will happen quickly and catch most people by surprise.


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