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Wednesday 19 February 2020

Points based immigration

Sometimes, a law has an undesirable side-effect. Sometimes these side-effects are obvious, but not noticed by politicians.

Let's consider UK immigration. Currently, this is running at 612,000 per year (2019 numbers) of which 200,000 is EU and 333,000 is non-EU.

Net migration (immigration minus emigration) is -52,000 British, 59,000 EU and 219,000 non-EU

This means that EU immigration is a small percentage of the total, and leavng the EU will have no effect on the 219,000 non-EU immigration. So, leaving the EU isn't going to have mush impact on net immigration.

Now let's put a points based system in place. This means that instead of unskilled people coming to the UK, there will be skilled people.

And that means that the availability of jobs as fruit pickers and labourers will be greatly increased, which will lead to more British-origin people doing those jobs. And at the same time, the availability of jobs for skilled people (programmers, dentists) will be decreased, as the points-based immigrants will eagerly go after those jobs.

But, of course, automation is the real job-killer.

Source

Tuesday 18 February 2020

What Happens When You Pour Salt into a Cabbage?


This was the subject line of a recent spam. It continued ...

Putting a chopped onion in your socks tonight might be the best thing for your health.

Wednesday 5 February 2020

Pneumonia jab

I hadn't known that there was a vaccine for pneumonia (which I barely know how to spell). But there is.

I was at the local clinic for a routine inspection, and the nurse said "I see you haven't had  a pneumonia jab." "No, I haven't. Should I?" "Yes"

So I rolled up my sleeve, she gave me a jab, and it was as simple as that.

I wasn't vaccinated because I hadn't known it was possible. ome people deliberately avoid getting their children vaccinated against, for example, measles, because they don't understand how it works, why it works, and why it's a good idea. I'd say "Darwin", but this isn't them, it's their children.

Ask your GP about the pneumonia jab.

Tuesday 4 February 2020

Lie detectors

 ... don't work.

There's been suggestions that terrorists leaving prison, should be put through a lie detector test to see if they intent to commit further offences.

If only.

The problem is, lie detectors don't work.

They are great fun when used on reality TV shows, and can lead to great drama and confrontations. But they don't actually work.

The American Psychological Association says they don't work. "Most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests can accurately detect lies."

Yes, it would be great if there existed a "magic lasso" as used by Wonder Woman, that forced people to only tell the truth.  Or if there was a "truth serum" (why is it always called a serum?) that did that. Or if there were some technology that could tell if someone is lying.

William Moulton Marston (author of the Wonder Woman stories) invented the lie detector.
Since then, it's been used many times, both for fun (as in reality TV shows) and in serious situations, and people seem to think that it works.

It doesn't work.