british jobs for british people,lmao

[Guest proud2beaussie]

As a side issue I pointed out that the immigration system for non-europeans into the UK is going to be pretty similar to your current process for Aus.

Yes but the question is not about non europeans, getting into the UK,it's about the fact that someone from the EU can walk freely with no immigration control into the UK and undercut a Brits wages,you apparently think that's "competition" I call it exploitation .it's not relevant how hard it is for say ,an Australian to get into the UK,because non europeans are not taking the jobs,it's the walk-in,work,walk out brigade who are causing the problem.in reality what do these people offer the UK,do they become UK citizens? no,they don't need to,do they become part of the local community?possibly some do,but many work cheaply and send money "home" every week and after a couple of years they head home again ,in many cases having not paid any tax.

[saunders clan]

 

My original point was that most of these poeple you're raging against are fellow europeans and perfectly entitled to work and abode in the UK.

 

This may be the case but is most certainly not fair or for that matter safe for either the Brits born and bred nor the immigrants who have gone through an immigration process or those who have made the effort to learn a trade/skill to fit in and work hard for a living here, many of whom when you speak to them share our views and are as disgraced with those originating from the same country who are making a mockery of the UK.

 

I worked with an Indian lass years ago who wanted to emigrate with her extended family to Oz to be with family already there, but Australia wouldn't have them, so they came to England instead because it was easy to get in.

[pablo]

Not correct... traditionally local manufacturing has been protected using import tariffs. These have been abandoned largely through free trade agreements which benefits consumers.

 

My original point was that most of these poeple you're raging against are fellow europeans and perfectly entitled to work and abode in the UK. As a side issue I pointed out that the immigration system for non-europeans into the UK is going to be pretty similar to your current process for Aus.

maybe for non eu nationals it is difficult,so it should be.did you fight for these import tariffs to be kept in place? lobby parliment etc? your attitude "as you said" is to buy the cheapest quality goods yourself,contributing to your own industrys downfall in the process no doubt,but the thread was about construction workers in the uk being undercut by 50% wasnt it?you say thats healthy competition,i say the country would collapse if that was the case across the board with every job,it would turn the uk into another third world sweat shop,and you say thats good?!!!also re what is british or not,see my post,i buy british, or what they "say" is british i said,im aware of the reassembling and various tricks they get up to,however i have'nt the time to actually "investigate" the items,i buy british ,or what is labelled british then:huh:. anyway,this is getting a bit boring now isnt it?going round in circles etc,you have your opinion and i have mine,cba going over and over it again,im just glad your not my union rep:biggrin:

[Guest treesea]

maybe for non eu nationals it is difficult,so it should be.did you fight for these import tariffs to be kept in place? lobby parliment etc? your attitude "as you said" is to buy the cheapest quality goods yourself,contributing to your own industrys downfall in the process no doubt,but the thread was about construction workers in the uk being undercut by 50% wasnt it?you say thats healthy competition,i say the country would collapse if that was the case across the board with every job,it would turn the uk into another third world sweat shop,and you say thats good?!!!also re what is british or not,see my post,i buy british, or what they "say" is british i said,im aware of the reassembling and various tricks they get up to,however i have'nt the time to actually "investigate" the items,i buy british ,or what is labelled british then:huh:. anyway,this is getting a bit boring now isnt it?going round in circles etc,you have your opinion and i have mine,cba going over and over it again,im just glad your not my union rep:biggrin:

 

I get the idea behind what you are saying but I think you are being impractical. I wouldn't buy a British made T-shirt for £20 when I can get a perfectly good Chinese made one for £5. The solution there isn't to make T-Shirts in the UK but rather to upskill our wrokers to levels and into industries where we compete really well. Things like bio medics, prosthetics (yaay for Scotland and it's bionic hand that looks like a real hand), renewable energy resources, salmon farming, apples (what kind of idiotic madness was it to levy so much taxes on apple orchards in the south of England, that farmers had no choice but to bulldoze the whole orchards?), organic farming (some of the stuff going on in Britain is of superb quality on this front, and a huge "yes" to the prince of Wales for making this kind of farming trendy), animal husbandry, ship building (yes, we still make them, currently a huge defence contract up here in East Scotland). Is condemning people to a life of poverty, working in factories that produce the same things as the Chinese but at three times the cost a productive use of our labour?

[Guest treesea]

 

My original point was that most of these poeple you're raging against are fellow europeans and perfectly entitled to work and abode in the UK.

 

This may be the case but is most certainly not fair or for that matter safe for either the Brits born and bred nor the immigrants who have gone through an immigration process or those who have made the effort to learn a trade/skill to fit in and work hard for a living here, many of whom when you speak to them share our views and are as disgraced with those originating from the same country who are making a mockery of the UK.

 

I worked with an Indian lass years ago who wanted to emigrate with her extended family to Oz to be with family already there, but Australia wouldn't have them, so they came to England instead because it was easy to get in.

 

Here we are at a disadvantage, because English is so widely spoken around the world. Even though, in theory, we have as much right to work in Prague as Czechs, for instance, have to work here, in practice it is unlikely a Czech firm would employ a Brit who only spoke broken Czech, if any. We go and live in France or Spain to relax, or set up a small business. The French come here to work. When you ask them why, why would they leave the sun, good food, an easy life to come and work in Britain, they say things like the work level is the same, they work just as hard, but somehow the work environment is easier, the state is not as intrusive as in France, etc, etc. One Polish guy working in a coffee shop up here - his own - told me that here in Scotland there are only two states of mind, to work hard then to have fun.

 

I'm sorry for the people in Britain who don't have jobs, but this is the best place to work in Europe. Well, there's a price for creating a positive work environment like that - millions of EU citizens are going to come here to work.

 

Another thing to keep in mind as well with Europe, for all Brits like to moan about the weather, the fact is we do have one of the better climates in all of Europe. No intense sun, bad winters once every blue moon - spare a thought for Germany and Poland who have our idea of a bad winter every year.

[Life on easy street]

you agree about what? i buy british whenever i can,and i stick to that,fatpom and plenty of others buy whatever is the cheapest quality goods, thats why there's no manufacturing industry anymore,its not hard to find out which goods are british,or at least "say" their british.btw,if someone asked me to show someone else my job i would tell them to work it where the sun dont shine.

 

Until I had the visa in my hands I did not want to do anything that may have prevented me getting my visa.

 

If I had said no they would have got someone else to do it

I would have been on the list at the next company restructuring which started to happen just after I got my visa.

[Life on easy street]

you agree about what? i buy british whenever i can,and i stick to that,fatpom and plenty of others buy whatever is the cheapest quality goods, thats why there's no manufacturing industry anymore,its not hard to find out which goods are british,or at least "say" their british.btw,if someone asked me to show someone else my job i would tell them to work it where the sun dont shine.

 

In many products it is only the external case that is manufactured in the U.K

With all the internal components outsource to other countries.

So when you think you are buying British manufactured you are in fact buying British assembled products.

[Life on easy street]

Ahhhh! :smile: So only your kind are precious enough to be protected?

 

What about the plumbers, sparkies, gas fitters, builders and other tradesmen I hire to do work in manufacturing facilities?

 

Although I now feel a bit of a lone figure since all these hard nosed capitalists have suddenly found socialism (now that the going gets tough for them too :biglaugh:) I'm as convinced as ever that protectionism ultimately depletes economies?

 

I agree ..

 

you are not alone i am not impressed at the socialism for the rich bankers.

[pablo]

In many products it is only the external case that is manufactured in the U.K

With all the internal components outsource to other countries.

 

So when you think you are buying British manufactured you are in fact buying British assembled products.

yes i know,refer to my previous post,i buy "british",or at least what states british,i cant investigate its exact source,as regards showing someone my job who was eventually going to take that job off me.........i wouldnt/couldnt do it,no way,wether someone else was going to show him or not,i couldnt,each to their own.

[pablo]

I get the idea behind what you are saying but I think you are being impractical. I wouldn't buy a British made T-shirt for £20 when I can get a perfectly good Chinese made one for £5. The solution there isn't to make T-Shirts in the UK but rather to upskill our wrokers to levels and into industries where we compete really well. Things like bio medics, prosthetics (yaay for Scotland and it's bionic hand that looks like a real hand), renewable energy resources, salmon farming, apples (what kind of idiotic madness was it to levy so much taxes on apple orchards in the south of England, that farmers had no choice but to bulldoze the whole orchards?), organic farming (some of the stuff going on in Britain is of superb quality on this front, and a huge "yes" to the prince of Wales for making this kind of farming trendy), animal husbandry, ship building (yes, we still make them, currently a huge defence contract up here in East Scotland). Is condemning people to a life of poverty, working in factories that produce the same things as the Chinese but at three times the cost a productive use of our labour?

I dont think british made goods are 3 times the cost tbh,i cant see many 55 year old machinists serving an aprentiship in bio medics,there is people in certain industrys that need our support "now",thats why i try to buy british,its all well and good saying retrain people and i suppose you have a point, but bio medics and prosthetics are'nt as labour intensive as say a factory making clothes imo,but the people in manufacturing have to pay bills in the short term,do we just carry on throwing people on the scrapheap untill companys or the gvnmt decide to invest in the industrys you talk about? tough love was a thatcher policy,and i dont want to go down the road of discussing her thx,we now import our coal from subsidised mines in poland etc, whole communities are still devestated from this tough love policy,and some of the mines have reopened and are posting a profit,i think its too easy to sit in an ivory tower and say this industry or that industry isnt cost effective,lets shut it down,we are talking about peoples lives here,america subsidises industry massively because its better than paying whole families social security,i guess it depends on which side of the political divide you sit on. Re shipbuilding,and im from lpool where we used to have a big shipbuilding industry, if you are saying lets only concentrate on the industrys that are cost effective,then you wouldnt see another ship built in the uk,because thats another area that we cant compete in,the defence contract given to the shipbuilders in scotland is effectively subsidised,because you can be sure the contract could have been built elsewhere at a cheaper cost,thus saving the taxpayer money. what im saying is subsidising industry ( to an extent ) isnt allways a bad thing. btw im not even discussing charles growing organic food on land that shouldnt even be his,lol. but i would hazard a guess that he does have a slight edge when it comes to winning contracts etc! what do you think? as i said,its all about opinion isnt it? it would be a boring world if we all agreed.

[Guest treesea]

I dont think british made goods are 3 times the cost tbh,i cant see many 55 year old machinists serving an aprentiship in bio medics,there is people in certain industrys that need our support "now",thats why i try to buy british,its all well and good saying retrain people and i suppose you have a point, but bio medics and prosthetics are'nt as labour intensive as say a factory making clothes imo,but the people in manufacturing have to pay bills in the short term,do we just carry on throwing people on the scrapheap untill companys or the gvnmt decide to invest in the industrys you talk about? tough love was a thatcher policy,and i dont want to go down the road of discussing her thx,we now import our coal from subsidised mines in poland etc, whole communities are still devestated from this tough love policy,and some of the mines have reopened and are posting a profit,i think its too easy to sit in an ivory tower and say this industry or that industry isnt cost effective,lets shut it down,we are talking about peoples lives here,america subsidises industry massively because its better than paying whole families social security,i guess it depends on which side of the political divide you sit on. Re shipbuilding,and im from lpool where we used to have a big shipbuilding industry, if you are saying lets only concentrate on the industrys that are cost effective,then you wouldnt see another ship built in the uk,because thats another area that we cant compete in,the defence contract given to the shipbuilders in scotland is effectively subsidised,because you can be sure the contract could have been built elsewhere at a cheaper cost,thus saving the taxpayer money. what im saying is subsidising industry ( to an extent ) isnt allways a bad thing. btw im not even discussing charles growing organic food on land that shouldnt even be his,lol. but i would hazard a guess that he does have a slight edge when it comes to winning contracts etc! what do you think? as i said,its all about opinion isnt it? it would be a boring world if we all agreed.

 

Yes, America subsidises industry massively and yet the levels of poverty there have to be seen to be believed. Homeless people living out of cars, or under freeways. People bringing up their kids in trailer parks with hardly any facilities, that make our caravan parks look like five star affairs. California, the richest state, cutting money to state schools so dramatically they can barely function properly. Are you really advocating their social model over ours? When it comes to supporting their poor, America is the disaster and nightmare of the western world. Do you ever hear Brits referring to the poor as white trash? No, we say instead "There, but for the grace of God, go I." America could learn a lot more from Britain about how to treat its citizens than we could ever learn from them.

 

If we don't retrain the people we are laying off, then the tax rate is going to have to go up, because a family of four receiving social welfare is entitled to benefits worth in excess of £20K a year. There's no way, under the current tax regime, we can afford even five million unemployed, let alone ten million.

 

I think what is scarier is, even if GB does the right thing and retrains all these workers, and then subsidise them so employers have a financial incentive to employ them, the same employers seem very reluctant to take on british workers if there is a foreigner lurking around who is prepared to do the job, even at the same price. Look at Total. They could have done the work they contracted out to the italians in house, and just laid on more British workers. But they're a French company. They don't want to employ Brits if they can get someone else to do the job. And they aren't alone. Up here in Edinburgh, we have thousands of Poles in employment. Construction, hospitality, retail, driving/trucking, even in banking. It's nothing to do with pay. They get exactly the same pay as the locals. But when you ask employers why would they do this when there are Scots out of work, they say things like, "They work hard, they're always happy, they never complain, they don't take sickies, they're young and ambitious (as opposed to young and work shy), if we need someone else we can avoid the employment agencies because they can get us someone just like them." I was amazed to go through to Blochairn in Glasgow one early morning, to the fruit and vegetable market there, and see signs in English and Polish, street signs, and hear more Polish than English being spoken among the drivers.

[pablo]

Yes, America subsidises industry massively and yet the levels of poverty there have to be seen to be believed. Homeless people living out of cars, or under freeways. People bringing up their kids in trailer parks with hardly any facilities, that make our caravan parks look like five star affairs. California, the richest state, cutting money to state schools so dramatically they can barely function properly. Are you really advocating their social model over ours? When it comes to supporting their poor, America is the disaster and nightmare of the western world. Do you ever hear Brits referring to the poor as white trash? No, we say instead "There, but for the grace of God, go I." America could learn a lot more from Britain about how to treat its citizens than we could ever learn from them.

 

If we don't retrain the people we are laying off, then the tax rate is going to have to go up, because a family of four receiving social welfare is entitled to benefits worth in excess of £20K a year. There's no way, under the current tax regime, we can afford even five million unemployed, let alone ten million.

 

I think what is scarier is, even if GB does the right thing and retrains all these workers, and then subsidise them so employers have a financial incentive to employ them, the same employers seem very reluctant to take on british workers if there is a foreigner lurking around who is prepared to do the job, even at the same price. Look at Total. They could have done the work they contracted out to the italians in house, and just laid on more British workers. But they're a French company. They don't want to employ Brits if they can get someone else to do the job. And they aren't alone. Up here in Edinburgh, we have thousands of Poles in employment. Construction, hospitality, retail, driving/trucking, even in banking. It's nothing to do with pay. They get exactly the same pay as the locals. But when you ask employers why would they do this when there are Scots out of work, they say things like, "They work hard, they're always happy, they never complain, they don't take sickies, they're young and ambitious (as opposed to young and work shy), if we need someone else we can avoid the employment agencies because they can get us someone just like them." I was amazed to go through to Blochairn in Glasgow one early morning, to the fruit and vegetable market there, and see signs in English and Polish, street signs, and hear more Polish than English being spoken among the drivers.

The people in the industrys that the usa subsidises dont live out of cars,as regards white trash,take a drive round some of the estates in the uk,they call them white trash,we call them underclass,same dance,different name. but im not talking about social security,im talking about subsidising industry in the same way lots of european countrys do,as you say it costs 20k a year to keep a family of four in welfare,so is it not better to subsidise an individual in a factory to the tune of say 5k?to keep them in work?its not just the money either,its the social issues that crop up when whole communities have no future,the cost of crime thats related to unemployment,the family unit breaking up etc,its all too easy to look at everything in black and white/short term monetary terms,as i said if defence shipbuilding contracts were handed out on purely cost you wouldnt have a ship built in the uk,so whats the difference ? the contract handed to scotland is indirectly subsidised because it could be built cheaper elsewhere.your views on retraining people in the industrys you mention are well meant no doubt,but these industrys are'nt realy "there" are they? i just think it would be better to subsidise people in industrys that already exist,rather than have whole communities ,present and future generations living a life with only the dole to look forward to,and as you say....paid for by us. dont start me on TOTAL! i started a thread on the same subject,this one!as regards employing foreigners not being about wages,i can assure you that in most cases it is!standard going rate for a bricky in the north west is approx £15 on hourly,polish brickies work for £7.50,so dont be taken in with all the toffee about them being better workers!

[Guest treesea]

The people in the industrys that the usa subsidises dont live out of cars,as regards white trash,take a drive round some of the estates in the uk,they call them white trash,we call them underclass,same dance,different name. but im not talking about social security,im talking about subsidising industry in the same way lots of european countrys do,as you say it costs 20k a year to keep a family of four in welfare,so is it not better to subsidise an individual in a factory to the tune of say 5k?to keep them in work?its not just the money either,its the social issues that crop up when whole communities have no future,the cost of crime thats related to unemployment,the family unit breaking up etc,its all too easy to look at everything in black and white/short term monetary terms,as i said if defence shipbuilding contracts were handed out on purely cost you wouldnt have a ship built in the uk,so whats the difference ? the contract handed to scotland is indirectly subsidised because it could be built cheaper elsewhere.your views on retraining people in the industrys you mention are well meant no doubt,but these industrys are'nt realy "there" are they? i just think it would be better to subsidise people in industrys that already exist,rather than have whole communities ,present and future generations living a life with only the dole to look forward to,and as you say....paid for by us. dont start me on TOTAL! i started a thread on the same subject,this one!as regards employing foreigners not being about wages,i can assure you that in most cases it is!standard going rate for a bricky in the north west is approx £15 on hourly,polish brickies work for £7.50,so dont be taken in with all the toffee about them being better workers!

 

But maybe that is all brick laying is worth - £7.50 an hour. The same thing happens in I.T. I used to work with SAP, a well known financial package. In the late 80s and early 90s, there were SAP consultants being employed in London to the tune of £1,200 a day. By the time I came back in 2004, that rate had dropped to around £350 a day, and nowadays it is more like £200 a day. And, as more and more people enter this market, that rate is going to continue to come under pressure. Nearly 30 years ago, when I was living in New Zealand, contract rates for qualified accountants were around $25 an hour. Fast forward 30 years on and if you can get $30 a hour, you are doing extremely well. That is a massive fall, in real terms, in pay. But maybe it is not such a bad thing, because during that time people who normally wouldn't have gone onto higher education have had the opportunity to do so.

 

With Total, the Portuguese contractors who came over said that not only were they not paid as much as local British workers but they clearly weren't needed, so went back home. This is in spite of insistence both by Total and their contractor that these workers were on the same rates as the local people. In other words, can you really believe what companies claim about British workers versus non British workers? But at the end of the day, if British workers want these sort of jobs, they may have to work for lower rates. Some of my family are from Merthyr, in the Welsh valleys, and they were telling me that some of these foreign companies who have shut up shop and taken their operations to lower wages countries attempted to renegotiate the wages down at their plants, and were told by the various unions to get lost. While I can understand the unions attitude, the end result is no work at all. Meanwhile, the local river, which used to hardly ever flood, is in flood every two or three years. Are flood defences a priority? Not on your life! And yet they would employ heaps of people.

 

One of the great enduring myths of the EU is that all these eastern and southern member countries which are not well off compared to their northern neighbours would somehow, magically, have their standards of living and social support structures raised to match that of places like France, Germany and the UK. Well, this, imho, defies logic. Any company, given a choice between two workers of similar skills, one of whom will do the same work for half the price of the other, is going to take the lower priced worker.

 

As to our "underclass", when we first came to Edinburgh we were driving around and had to be told which areas were poor because it sure isn't obvious from looking at them. I tested this out on a friend who lives in Australia and when I showed her one high rise, complete with balconies all overlooking the Firth of Forth, and told her this was a really poor area, she didn't believe me. The highest the unemployment rate gets in any of these poorer suburbs is 7.9% (Wester Hailes - 2007 figures). That high rise and the surrounding area is zoned to the best state school in Edinburgh. So much for the underclass. In the trailer parks we went to when we lived in L.A. it was more like the opposite way around. Hardly anyone worked.

 

I don't have a problem with the British taxpayer subsidising genuinely British industries, the way the French subsidise Renault, Citroen, their aerospace and aircraft industires, not to mention their rail network. But why should they subsidise foreign companies like Nissan or Total? Our infrastructure, especially in England, is falling down. I'd rather see investment in things like the railways, flood defences, power stations, all of which can employ tens of thousands of skilled British workers. How about investing in high speed broadband up and down the country? Our broadband speeds are pathetic compared to our northern neighbours. And when is GB going to start building reasonably priced housing? He claims he's going to. So what's the delay? Goodness knows we need it.

 

We are living in a UK that is likely to increase in population to 70-80 million within our lifetimes. It's about time the government stopped kowtowing to non British owned companies and started to invest in infrastructure and our own countries.

[pablo]

But maybe that is all brick laying is worth - £7.50 an hour. The same thing happens in I.T. I used to work with SAP, a well known financial package. In the late 80s and early 90s, there were SAP consultants being employed in London to the tune of £1,200 a day. By the time I came back in 2004, that rate had dropped to around £350 a day, and nowadays it is more like £200 a day. And, as more and more people enter this market, that rate is going to continue to come under pressure. Nearly 30 years ago, when I was living in New Zealand, contract rates for qualified accountants were around $25 an hour. Fast forward 30 years on and if you can get $30 a hour, you are doing extremely well. That is a massive fall, in real terms, in pay. But maybe it is not such a bad thing, because during that time people who normally wouldn't have gone onto higher education have had the opportunity to do so.

 

With Total, the Portuguese contractors who came over said that not only were they not paid as much as local British workers but they clearly weren't needed, so went back home. This is in spite of insistence both by Total and their contractor that these workers were on the same rates as the local people. In other words, can you really believe what companies claim about British workers versus non British workers? But at the end of the day, if British workers want these sort of jobs, they may have to work for lower rates. Some of my family are from Merthyr, in the Welsh valleys, and they were telling me that some of these foreign companies who have shut up shop and taken their operations to lower wages countries attempted to renegotiate the wages down at their plants, and were told by the various unions to get lost. While I can understand the unions attitude, the end result is no work at all. Meanwhile, the local river, which used to hardly ever flood, is in flood every two or three years. Are flood defences a priority? Not on your life! And yet they would employ heaps of people.

 

One of the great enduring myths of the EU is that all these eastern and southern member countries which are not well off compared to their northern neighbours would somehow, magically, have their standards of living and social support structures raised to match that of places like France, Germany and the UK. Well, this, imho, defies logic. Any company, given a choice between two workers of similar skills, one of whom will do the same work for half the price of the other, is going to take the lower priced worker.

 

As to our "underclass", when we first came to Edinburgh we were driving around and had to be told which areas were poor because it sure isn't obvious from looking at them. I tested this out on a friend who lives in Australia and when I showed her one high rise, complete with balconies all overlooking the Firth of Forth, and told her this was a really poor area, she didn't believe me. The highest the unemployment rate gets in any of these poorer suburbs is 7.9% (Wester Hailes - 2007 figures). That high rise and the surrounding area is zoned to the best state school in Edinburgh. So much for the underclass. In the trailer parks we went to when we lived in L.A. it was more like the opposite way around. Hardly anyone worked.

 

I don't have a problem with the British taxpayer subsidising genuinely British industries, the way the French subsidise Renault, Citroen, their aerospace and aircraft industires, not to mention their rail network. But why should they subsidise foreign companies like Nissan or Total? Our infrastructure, especially in England, is falling down. I'd rather see investment in things like the railways, flood defences, power stations, all of which can employ tens of thousands of skilled British workers. How about investing in high speed broadband up and down the country? Our broadband speeds are pathetic compared to our northern neighbours. And when is GB going to start building reasonably priced housing? He claims he's going to. So what's the delay? Goodness knows we need it.

 

We are living in a UK that is likely to increase in population to 70-80 million within our lifetimes. It's about time the government stopped kowtowing to non British owned companies and started to invest in infrastructure and our own countries.

Well,we dont realy disagree on the main arguments,just how best to go about it. if your friends from australia couldnt believe specific areas in edinburgh were underclass,oxgangs?bring them to lpool,to the boot estate,toxteth,croxteth,they will be left in no doubt, believe me,as regards your comment that bricklaying may only be worth £7.50 an hour,im not going to comment,because i find it realy offensive tbh,i know you dont mean it that way ( i dont think! )but to compare people going from £1200 a day to £200 a day has no relevance when we are talking about £15 an hour to £7.50 an hour,sorry but thats the truth,do you realise how patronising it sounds when you are more or less saying because a flat has a balcony looking out over a river everythings ok?.are you saying we have no underclass then?no 2nd generation doleys?

[Life on easy street]

Yes, America subsidises industry massively and yet the levels of poverty there have to be seen to be believed. Homeless people living out of cars, or under freeways. People bringing up their kids in trailer parks with hardly any facilities, that make our caravan parks look like five star affairs. California, the richest state, cutting money to state schools so dramatically they can barely function properly. Are you really advocating their social model over ours? When it comes to supporting their poor, America is the disaster and nightmare of the western world. Do you ever hear Brits referring to the poor as white trash? No, we say instead "There, but for the grace of God, go I." America could learn a lot more from Britain about how to treat its citizens than we could ever learn from them.

 

If we don't retrain the people we are laying off, then the tax rate is going to have to go up, because a family of four receiving social welfare is entitled to benefits worth in excess of £20K a year. There's no way, under the current tax regime, we can afford even five million unemployed, let alone ten million.

 

I think what is scarier is, even if GB does the right thing and retrains all these workers, and then subsidise them so employers have a financial incentive to employ them, the same employers seem very reluctant to take on british workers if there is a foreigner lurking around who is prepared to do the job, even at the same price. Look at Total. They could have done the work they contracted out to the italians in house, and just laid on more British workers. But they're a French company. They don't want to employ Brits if they can get someone else to do the job. And they aren't alone. Up here in Edinburgh, we have thousands of Poles in employment. Construction, hospitality, retail, driving/trucking, even in banking. It's nothing to do with pay. They get exactly the same pay as the locals. But when you ask employers why would they do this when there are Scots out of work, they say things like, "They work hard, they're always happy, they never complain, they don't take sickies, they're young and ambitious (as opposed to young and work shy), if we need someone else we can avoid the employment agencies because they can get us someone just like them." I was amazed to go through to Blochairn in Glasgow one early morning, to the fruit and vegetable market there, and see signs in English and Polish, street signs, and hear more Polish than English being spoken among the drivers.

 

I worked at a factory near Luton & just about every nationality was there.

The best technicians were the British by a long way.

 

The people not from the U.K were definitely being paid less.

I know this because a few of them had the balls to complain about being paid below the company rate for the job.

 

It cost the company a few thousand that week.

 

Do you really expect people to believe it is not about pay

It has always been about pay & always will be about pay.

I am sure 99% of the people on pomsinoz realise this.

 

[Guest treesea]

Well,we dont realy disagree on the main arguments,just how best to go about it. if your friends from australia couldnt believe specific areas in edinburgh were underclass,oxgangs?bring them to lpool,to the boot estate,toxteth,croxteth,they will be left in no doubt, believe me,as regards your comment that bricklaying may only be worth £7.50 an hour,im not going to comment,because i find it realy offensive tbh,i know you dont mean it that way ( i dont think! )but to compare people going from £1200 a day to £200 a day has no relevance when we are talking about £15 an hour to £7.50 an hour,sorry but thats the truth.

 

Yes, sorry you thought me patronising - I didn't mean it that way. My point was that any work, as such, doesn't have an intrinsic financial price. The price is just a matter of supply and demand. Clearly, bricklaying is of more value in itself than sitting around in an office pontificating to the bemused client about why he needs to ditch his perfectly adequate, cheap to run, software in favour of whatever your company happens to be hawking at the moment. How do I know this? Well, my grandparents terrace in Yorkshire was built at the turn of the last century, and lo and behold, here we are, 100 years on, and that wee two up two down terrace is going to outlast us all.

Contrast that to a few reports produced by I.T. people, which cost the shareholders - after all, ultimately its the shareholders' money being wasted, - tens of thousands of pounds, and yet, two years on, the reports are no longer being used. Oh no sirree, now there is a new guy, who wants his own reports, ...for tens of thousands of pounds. Some development work in I.T. is more like throw away art, except at least people get to enjoy the output of pavement artists for a while.

 

The pricing of either of these two events is just driven by supply and demand, and bears no relation to the real value of either activity. The more bricklayers that arrive on our shores, the more the price is going to fall. The Indian market has driven down the price of I.T. and I don't think we are within coo-ee of the bottom of that market pricewise just yet. If you look to the longer term though, bricklayers will always be needed in Britain, whereas I.T. may well go the same way as the clothing industry - just a few customer facing people here, a bit like people working in clothes shops, and all the development done elsewhere, in some developing nation where people work for our idea of peanuts.

 

,do you realise how patronising it sounds when you are more or less saying because a flat has a balcony looking out over a river everythings ok?.are you saying we have no underclass then?no 2nd generation doleys?

 

When it comes to people on the dole, even second generation ones, I have family in Merthyr who haven't had immediate family members in work since the mines there closed down, getting on for three or four generations. I don't see them as the underclass. They are just the same as everyone else, except they don't have access to credit, so if they want anything have to save up or sell off something in order to get it. There's very little work in Merthyr, or in the surrounding valleys. Why does being even third and fourth generation on the dole make them the underclass? I think that is offensive. Was it their fault they come from Merthyr, instead of Oxford or the south east of England, for instance? They simply can't afford to leave to go to look for work elsewhere. Westminster is not prepared to subsidise firms to move into the area and set up shop.

 

As to up here, Oxgangs? When we first came to Scotland, someone took us to Craigmillar, meant to be one of the most deprived areas of Edinburgh. Unemployment rate less than 10%. The quality of the housing was amazing. You wouldn't have known the council owned any of it - it all looked private. Nowadays up here, all new build estates have to have 25% or so set aside for social housing. No variation in the quality allowed either. There isn't the stigma to council housing up here that there is in England. Firstly, the properties are usually well built, and secondly it's often the only way to get a property at a reasonable rental rate. A three bedroom flat just down the road from us, in Granton, costs £70 a week from the council. If you rented the same style privately owned flat in the same area, you would be looking at double that. Keeping in mind nearly all these people are working, it makes good sense for them to live in council housing.

 

And why is that? Because Westminster, due to some formula, pay Scotland a huge amount per person compared to what they allocate for England and Wales, so Scotland can afford to knock down anything they think is even vaguely substandard and build like there's no tomorrow.

[Guest treesea]

I worked at a factory near Luton & just about every nationality was there.

The best technicians were the British by a long way.

 

The people not from the U.K were definitely being paid less.

I know this because a few of them had the balls to complain about being paid below the company rate for the job.

 

It cost the company a few thousand that week.

 

Do you really expect people to believe it is not about pay

It has always been about pay & always will be about pay.

 

I am sure 99% of the people on pomsinoz realise this.

 

 

Well, that's just economic sense, to employ people at the lowest rate you can. Most companies, if they can persuade someone to do the job for minimum wage, will take advantage of those workers, even if they have British workers working next to them on twice or three times that rate.

 

However, doesn't the theory go in Britain that you have to employ those foreign born workers who are legally allowed to work and reside here at exactly the same rate you are paying British workers to do the same job? What concerns me is that this seems to be very lightly policed, if at all. For example in the Total situation, their sub contractor was saying yes he was paying the workers he imported the same as the British workers, but the workers themselves (the Portuguese who went home) said that was a load of tosh.

 

It doesn't look like there will be much job security in the private sector in Britain as time goes on. Not just downwards pressure on hourly rates, but because a lot of companies these days are owned by foreign companies, who have no qualms about closing down factories and moving production to cheaper places elsewhere. A good example is Hoover. When it was American things went well in Merthyr for the Hoover factory, but once it was sold to an Italian company (Candy) it hasn't taken long - just since 2004 - to go from a viable business to closure. Before all this happened they went to the government and said that to stay in Britain they would need subsidies, because it was cheaper to make the items in Eastern Europe. Of course, the government, desperate as it is to get all of us on the dole, refused. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

I'd say this is as much a problem of falling revenues as with falling pay. If that factory in Luton had been seeing sales volumes drop through the floor, as a lot of companies are experiencing at the moment, to the point where it was having trouble meeting it's fixed costs, rather than pay up it may have instead opted to reduce its workforce by laying a whole lot of people off. Unions and strike action? The days of Arthur Scargill are surely over. Recently, with Total, all they had to agree to is laying on 100 extra British workers, and the union caved in.

 

Why were the best technicians at the factory British? Is that just because the factory hired inappropriate skilled foreign labour, or, having employed the foreign labour, didn't train them properly?