BBC: Why Germany needs migrants more than UK

Robert Peston:

There is an economic and demographic backdrop to the differential policies towards asylum-seekers of Germany and the UK - to Germany's relatively open door, that compares with the UK's heavily fortified portal (which will be opened just a bit by David Cameron later today).

The two relevant points (leaving aside moral ones) are that:

1. the UK's population is rising fast, whereas Germany's is falling fast;
2. the dependency ratio (the proportion of expensive older people in the population relative to able-bodied, tax-generating workers) is rising much quicker in Germany than in the UK.

So to put it another way, it is arguably particularly useful to Germany to have an influx of young grateful families from Syria or elsewhere, who may well be keen to toil and strive to rebuild their lives and prove to their hosts that they are not a burden - in the way that successive immigrant waves have done all over the world (including Jews like my family in London's East End).

Here are the European Commission's projections from its Ageing Report that was published earlier this year.

It projects that Germany's population will shrink from 81.3 million in 2013 to 70.8 million in 2060, whereas the UK's will rise from 64.1 million to 80.1 million.

As you can see, what is striking is that the UK is set to become the EU's most populous country, ahead of Germany and France, as a result of a relatively high fertility rate and greater projected rates of net migration.

It is probably relevant that the Commission forecasts that the proportion of the German population in 2060 represented by migrants arriving after 2013 would be 9%, compared with 14% in the UK. So Germany would be a lot less multicultural than the UK.

As for the dependency ratio, the percentage of those 65 and over compared with those aged between 15 and 64, that is forecast to rise from 32% to a very high 59% in Germany by 2060.

Or to put it another way, by 2060 there will be fewer than two Germans under 65 to work and generate taxes to support each German over 65.

...

Here is the thing. Wherever you stand in the debate on whether immigration is a good or bad thing - and most economists would argue that immigration promotes growth - right now immigration looks much more economically useful to Germany than to the UK.

That is perhaps one of the unspoken reasons why Germany is being much more welcoming to asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere right now.

That said, some business leaders and a couple of Tory ministers gave me what can only be described as an off-message critique of David Cameron's approach to the migrant crisis over the weekend.

They said that Angela Merkel is creaming off the most economically useful of the asylum seekers, by taking those that have shown the gumption and initiative to risk life and limb by fleeing to Europe.

Precedent suggests they will be the ones that find work fastest and impose the least economic burden on Germany or any other host country.

By contrast, David Cameron appears to be doing what many would see as the more morally admirable thing - which is to go to the Syrian camps and invite children and the most vulnerable of refugees to Britain....

Ah, the politics of population-replacement...

Here we are in the age of the robot, and yet still we talk of too few workers.  One might think our policies...and our politics might reflect the same...As if !  What they do reflect, as always, are the interests of capital.

The Beeb has a poll out on public attitudes in the UK towards taking in more refugees.  They note that those of a working-class background are much less supportive (24% to 54%) than the middle-classes.  Wonder why that might be ?*


* No, not that they are simply uneducated and/or racist.

Guardian: Can we reverse the ageing process by putting young blood into older people?

A series of experiments has produced incredible results by giving young blood to old mice. Now the findings are being tested on humans. Ian Sample meets the scientists whose research could transform our lives

On an August morning in 2008, Tony Wyss-Coray sat in a conference room at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, California, waiting for his lab’s weekly meeting to begin. Wyss-Coray, a professor of neurology at Stanford University, was leading a young group of researchers who studied ageing and neurodegeneration. As a rule, the gatherings were forgettable affairs – the incremental nature of scientific progress does not lend itself to big surprises. But a lab member scheduled to speak that day had taken on a radical project, and he had new results to share.

Saul Villeda, an ebullient PhD student with slick black hair and a goatee, had spent the past year engrossed in research that called to mind the speculative medical science of the middle ages. He was investigating whether the old and frail could be rejuvenated by infusions of blood from the young. The hypothesis was not as absurd as it might sound.

Villeda had conducted pilot studies with pairs of surgically conjoined mice that shared a blood supply for several weeks. Young mice received blood from older mice, and old mice received blood from younger ones. Villeda wanted to see the effect on their brains. Neurons in ageing brains lose their connections and start to die off; ultimately, the brain shrinks and becomes less effective. A region called the hippocampus, crucial for memory and learning, is one of the first to deteriorate with age, causing people’s memories and thought processes to falter.

...

Villeda got three hours’ sleep that night. The next morning, he stood up at the lab meeting and revealed to his colleagues what young blood did to the ageing brain. “There was a palpable electricity in the room,” Wyss-Coray recalled. “I remember seeing the images for the first time and saying, ‘Wow.’” Old mice that received young blood experienced a burst of brain cell growth in the hippocampus. They had three to four times as many newborn neurons as their counterparts. But that was not all: old blood had the opposite effect on the brains of young mice, stalling the birth of new neurons and leaving them looking old before their time.

The other scientists in the room were stunned. Some were sceptical. Could it be real? “This could be big,” said Wyss-Coray. “If an old mouse starts to make more neurons when you give it young blood? That is amazing.”

Since that meeting seven years ago, research on this topic has moved on dramatically. It has led some to speculate that in young blood might lie an antidote to the ravages of old age. But the apparent rejuvenating properties of young blood must be treated with healthy scepticism. The hopes they raise rest solely on mouse studies. No beneficial effects have ever been proven in humans. Then again, no one has ever looked.

That is about to change. In October 2014, Wyss-Coray launched the first human trial of young blood. At Stanford School of Medicine, infusions of blood plasma from young people are being given to older people with Alzheimer’s disease. The results are expected at the end of the year. It is the greatest test yet for the medical potential of young blood.

...

Scientists may never halt the process entirely: ageing is an opaque and complex mingle of molecular pathways. But they might learn how to stop changes that underpin the worst chronic diseases. They want to extend healthspan, not lifespan.

...

The study was published in Nature Medicine in 2014. Immediately, emails flooded in to Wyss-Coray’s inbox. Alzheimer’s patients wanted infusions of young blood. So did numerous aged billionaires. One, who flies around in a jet with his name emblazoned on the side, invited Wyss-Coray to an Oscars after-party this year. (He didn’t go.) Another correspondent wrote with a more disturbing offer: he said he could provide blood from children of whatever age the scientists required. Wyss-Coray was appalled. “That was creepy,” he said.

...

As a business proposition, the transfusion of young blood raises all kinds of fears. It raises the spectre of a macabre black market, where teenagers bleed for the highest bidder, and young children go missing from the streets. Then there is the danger of unscrupulous dealers selling fake plasma, or plasma unsafe for human infusion. The fears are not unfounded: health has become one of the most lucrative sectors for criminals and con artists.

Havocscope, an online database, tracks the latest prices of all manner of black market goods and services. For $600 you can buy an AK-47 in Europe. A rhino-horn dagger will cost you $14,000. The services of a group of former military snipers? That will be $800,000. The list includes human organs too, mostly lungs, kidneys and livers. Today, a healthy seller can expect about $5,000 for their kidney. The organ broker who handles the deal can make a hefty profit, selling it on for $150,000 to a wealthy patient who needs a transplant.

In some countries, there is already a legal market for blood plasma. In the wake of the BSE crisis of the 1990s, plasma donations are not used in the UK. But in the US, donors can make $200 a month (plus loyalty points) from plasma donations. The fresh plasma is separated from the blood, and the red blood cells returned to the bloodstream, in a sitting that lasts 90 minutes. The plasma is used in medical procedures, to treat coagulation disorders and immune deficiencies. The business is completely legitimate, but if young plasma is proved to have anti-ageing effects, the risk of backstreet operators setting up will soar. When I asked Wyss-Coray if the prospect worried him, he looked serious. “Absolutely,” he said. “There are always going to be nutcases.”

Now, if only, for the sake of the ageing billionaires of the world, we had a large and ever-growing population of poor people desperate to make money any way they could.  Including younger generations growing up knowing that they will never achieve the same level of (relative) prosperity as their parents.  Oh, right.

Fun fun times ahead.

You...No...You Didn't....But...No...

And there I was thinking the shit with Darth Lord Walker's bald spot was over-hyped...

Really ?  Seriously ?

The Duchess of Cambridge is famed for her glossy, lustrous locks.

But she has been offered some sage advice by celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke, who fears she faces potential "disaster" by letting them go grey.

The Duchess, 33, has occasionally revealed a small patch of silver, most recently in February when she was six months pregnant with Princess Charlotte.

But Clarke has urged her never to do so again.

"Kate needs to get rid of her grey hair — it's not a good look," he told the Daily Mail.

"She does have amazing things done to her hair and it can look great, but unfortunately it's the case for women — all women — that until you're really old, you can't be seen to have any grey hairs."

Clarke, 57, who has styled Princess Diana and the Duchess of York, claimed grey hair would be "disastrous" for the Duchess.

He added: "It's different for men. Men can go grey in their mid-50s and still be considered attractive. It's the whole silver fox thing. But it's not the same for women. Kate is such a style icon that even a few strands of grey would be a disaster, so I highly recommend that she cover it up. I hate grey hair."

If I could actually resign from humanity, and there were anywhere else the fuck to actually go...I'd do it.  And don't doubt it for one moment.


*I'm almost tempted to unleash even more ABBA on the world -- Come on, when was any problem not solved with the application of more Swedish pop from the seventies & eighties ?

Pope Francis hints at 'brief' papacy

Hmm.  On the one hand, this could be the Catholic Church's loss, and that of the world.  On the other hand, the man is seventy-eight years old...  Prior to Benedict XVI, the last resignation the church saw of a sitting Pope was in the Middle Ages.  If this is to become established practice, I'm not at all sure it would be a bad thing, and do wonder how much this is/may be a reaction to the way John Paul II so publicly and painfully dragged out his papacy to the last moments of his life.  The Catholic Church has always spun this as a positive, as further evidence of JP's commitment to 'the sanctity of life', but I'm not so sure it helped the church or its image, or how effective a leader JP could have been towards the end.  Far better I think if JP had handed over power earlier to a more able leader, and been able to face his struggles in a more private and dignified manner.  But that just's my opinion of course. 

Pope Francis has suggested he may resign his papacy like his predecessor, rather than remain at the Vatican for life.

The pontiff made the comments during a interview with Mexican television, marking the second anniversary of his election.

"I have the feeling that my pontificate will be brief. Four or five years; I do not know, even two or three," he said.

He praised Pope Benedict's decision to step aside in 2013 as "courageous".

"Benedict should not be considered an exception, but an institution. Maybe he will be the only one for a long time, maybe he will not be the only one.