In the last recorded full year, to March 2019, net migration into the UK from the EU was 59,000 while from outwith the EU it was 219,000.
That table is from racist playground the Migration Watch website. It is a poisonous organisation, but their figures seem to be correctly extrapolated from the Office of National Statistics. There is one matter on which Migration Watch are actually correct, which I will come to anon.
Non-EU net immigration has risen substantially in each of the last eight years. The second most interesting point about the Home Office’s policy statement on the new “points-based immigration system” is that none of the existing routes by which 219,000 non-EU migrants per year enter the UK is to be abolished (paras 12-13, 20-24). So that 219,000 non-EU net migrant figure will not be reduced as a result of these changes. Indeed, as several references in the paper make clear, immigration opportunities for non-EU citizens are increased as a result of this paper.
Those immigration routes for non-EU citizens are increased quite substantially. I anticipate a major surge in immigration from the Commonwealth as a result of this change. The problem the Government will find is that a points based system results in a level of automaticity of qualification. Those from English speaking countries – let’s say Ghana or India, but it is true of scores – already have the language qualification and benefit from good educational systems. Crucially, there are large very established communities from those countries already in the UK which own a vast plethora of companies, which makes securing a job offer much easier. I have no doubt whatsoever that many companies will discover an urgent need for one new accountant and two new systems administrators, and that cousins and brothers with genuine, appropriate qualifications, who previously the family was finding it difficult to bring in to the UK, will now breeze through to work for the family firm.
Speaks English? Yes, 10 points. Job offer? Yes, 20 points. Salary over £25,600? Yes, 20 points. Appropriate skill level? Accountant or IT systems administrator, yes, 20 points. For the avoidance of doubt, I have spoken to people in Ghana today already working on how to make money out of helping people get in through the scheme once it starts on 1 January.
I have written before about the tragic deprofessionalisation of the former UK Immigration Service. The system has been privatised and largely decoupled from Embassies, with visa processing handled by private companies in separate buildings. The vast majority of applications are never seen at all by an immigration professional from the Home Office or FCO. They are handled by very poorly paid employees, often locals of the country, completely as a tick box computer exercise.
In the days when the UK had a real Immigration Service, and I line managed a visa section in Accra which had 22 British professional Entry Clearance Officers in it, the very wise Chief Immigration Officer Myron Reid used to tell his staff always to remember it was not the documents they were admitting to the UK, it was the person. The key test was; did you believe the individual and should they be admitted, not how much paperwork they could produce, verification of which was always very difficult. Nowadays the much lower paid, private sector employed drones taking the vast majority of decisions seldom see the individual. The paperwork is all that counts. This will be still more the case as they tick the boxes to add up the 70 points.
I make this forecast with confidence. The net result of these changes will be increased net immigration into the UK, with a substantial spike in non-EU immigration visible in the March 2021 annual return. This is the other point on which Migration Watch are actually correct. The difference is, of course, that I very much welcome the increased immigration opportunities which will arise and believe the increased immigration is essential to our economy and society. I also find it irresistibly hilarious that the large majority of those who voted Brexit and voted Tory, who were primarily motivated by racism, will as a consequence face a substantive surge in non-white immigration. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at that.
It is also worth noting that, while the freedom of movement with the EU was reciprocal, it is being exchanged for a new policy that will not be. It is going to be far easier for an Indian citizen to qualify to work in the UK, than for a UK citizen to go and work in India.
Do I believe that the government is deliberately seeking to increase non-EU migration? No, I don’t. I think they are just massively incompetent, have misread the effect of the points-based system which was only a vote-winning slogan, and have not understood the lack of control of implementation resulting from their austerity destruction of the professional Immigration Service.
I appreciate this is not the analysis that has been given from pretty well all other left wing thinkers. They have chosen to fight this as a radical restriction of immigration. Of course, what is lost is freedom of movement. It will be harder for EU nationals to come and work here and particularly in jobs the government deems as low-skilled. I utterly deplore the loss of free movement, which was one of the great societal advances of my lifetime. However, I suspect that many EU citizens who wish to live in the UK will still manage to gain employment that fits with the government’s rules. I want for a moment to consider the question of labour shortages in certain industries, which has dominated media debate on the points based system to date.
Firstly it is worth noting that, if not deterred by the ludicrously costly bureaucracy – and that is a real bar to genuine applicants – the paper has sufficient loopholes to allow immigrants, including EU immigrants, to come for work in many of the areas where shortages are feared. Nurses, for example, will not have to meet the minimum salary threshold, because in the NHS and other institutions national pay scales will take precedence over the minimum salary of £25,600 (para 4). In the building trade, plasterers and electricians will count as skilled. What constitutes skilled work is peculiarly arbitrary – anyone who thinks filleting fish is unskilled work should try it. Still more arbitrary is the notion that salary defines the value or the skill of work done. Care work doesn’t seem to me exactly easy.
The fundamental takeaway from this policy is that people who earn under £25,600 are viewed as inferior beings. It is remarkable that a government that claims its aim is to end discrimination between EU citizens and others, views discrimination on grounds of earnings as more laudable.
There will indeed be labour shortages arising from the imposition of this policy, in hospitality, agriculture, social care and other sectors. This will cause some economic pain. The Brexit myth that there are millions of hard working Brits waiting to re-enter the Labour market once no longer undercut by rampaging Romanians, will be exposed for the nonsense that it is. So is the idea that care homes will start paying £18 an hour to attract staff as a result of Brexit.
The paper states that there will be a power to add further “shortage occupations”, a job offer in which will give qualifying points, and I strongly suspect that will be quickly and quietly used rather than permit sectors to collapse. The power of adding shortage occupations is left by the paper with the Migration Advisory Committee, rather than with mad Priti Patel, which I am told she is not too pleased about but gives some hope the economy will not be ruined for the sake of xenophobia. But the extraordinarily high cost of immigration applications is also going to be a severe barrier to finding alternative staffing flows to EU free movement for low paid work. Upfront Home Office application charges – most of which goes to those private agencies doing the call centre type visa processing – of some £1500 will of course be an entirely new obstacle to those from the EU, and a substantial problem. So is the probable new requirement for medical insurance for EU citizens working here.
So the new policy will create at least temporary staffing shortages in some key economic sectors, will substantially diminish the rights of EU citizens, and will in my firm estimation lead overall to an increase in net immigration. I earlier referred to the second most interesting point being that the new policy did nothing to block pre-existing routes to non-EU immigration. The most interesting point of all is that it is a disaster for the rights of British citizens. British citizens lose the right to move freely around Europe, to work, settle and lead their lives over the vast majority of that great continent. It is an appalling restriction on the opportunities of all of us, especially of the young.
This great freedom has been thrown away to promote the views of racists. Those racists are so incompetent that at the same time as shredding British citizens’ right to migrate freely to the EU, they are inadvertently opening the doors to a new net increase in immigration into the UK largely from outwith the EU. This level of hapless blundering is a further marker in the extraordinary deterioration of the UK state as functioning entity.
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Craig, something I think you should know; comments got closed at squonk last night. Do please delete this comment after you’ve read it.
Err pardon the intrusion C .. just out of curiosity what is’squonk’ ?
Dungroanin, sorry, I don’t know what to do for the best, so I’m doing the minimum I find acceptable, so no info. Sorry.
That people are viewed in financial terms tells us its all about the money.
Employers will use this to their advantage & reduce wages where possible, which means the Unions need to get moving on this.
On the potential for a Net increase in immigration resulting from the changes, will 70 points guarantee entry or will there be an arbitrary cap to be applied annually when the country is “full”?
The Migration Advisory Committee may control the nuts and bolts at first but how long before mad Priti wrestles control backed by the howling gammons?
£1,500 per application payed to the outsourcing giants (Crapita et al) staffed by “drones”. Quite a profit margin. Given the outsourcing giants “sponsoring” of party conferences and the revolving doors between them and the Westminster / Whitehall nexus, quelle surprise.
The requirement for medical insurance / upfront payment to the NHS is an outrage. Any future immigrants under this new scheme must have a job before entering the country. They therefore must be paying tax immediately. New immigrants are being fleeced (that should acclimatise to life in Cumming’s new UK).
“The system has been privatised and largely decoupled from Embassies, with visa processing handled by private companies in separate buildings.”
Often with “special treatment” and “fast tracking” available for those who pay large bribes – pretty much out in the open in some countries, and not as if the embassies don’t have anything to do with it.
Thanks for that excellent article, Craig, it leaves many questions unanswered.
Looks like Eu migrants will have tighter hoops to jump through than non Eu migrants.
What of those Eu migrants who have lived here for decades and are now retired here?
Will they have to get a visa to visit their home country they hold a.valid passport to?
What if EU citizens own property here and dont want to sell up because they have grown up children and grandchildren here?
It is on topic.
“It will be harder for EU nationals to come and work here and particularly in jobs the government deems as low-skilled.”
“There will indeed be labour shortages arising from the imposition of this policy, in hospitality, agriculture, social care and other sectors.”
This is what a lot of British people were concerned about, i.e. jobs in pubs, restaurants, other “low-skilled” jobs were not available to British people. Many of these jobs were taken by EU migrants. Whether you agree with the changes or not (I would prefer to stay in the EU with free-movement) surely there will be vacancies and/or possibly higher wages in certain of these “low-skilled” and low-paid jobs. There are a lot of people who can’t afford to retire at 65. I can see many older people needing to work well into their 70s. That’s who could be serving you a pint of beer in the pub. 🙂
I think you will find the queue is rather small, Richard, and that if you think wages in pubs or cafes will go up enough to attract a queue you will be sadly disappointed.
Listening to a cafe owner on the James O’Brien radio show, service charges are used to bolster employees wages, I guess the charge would need to go up in those circumstances.
Ha….it was ever thus, even back in the 60’s…..greedy bastards.
Yes, absolutely! I was in my local (and excellent) Indian restaurant last (I sent le patron, this essay) and a chef is classed as unskilled, as are bakers! Craig, incompetent doesn’t even begin to describe the carpet-baggers who now claim to run the state (on behalf of Crapita et al, as someone else point out here). In any case, le patron is desperate for a chef but unable to get one with the necessary skill and experience. Will Indian restaurants soon be just a memory, as will bakers?
And Craig, you’re absolutely on money, aside from the (lack of) politics with these gangsters, they’re so awful, they’d rather destroy everything in pursuit of their bankrupt, defunct, Victorian vision of life. I’m appalled. Where is my dear friend Lord Patel (or Edward Teague as I knew him) when we need him?
Craig, no the list is not small, indeed wages are already rising in certain sectors due to labour shortages.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/24/construction-pay-rises-as-eu-workers-weigh-up-leaving-uk-survey-brexit
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/average-pay-soars-in-construction-jobs-as-uk-loses-eu-workers-brexit-095802086.html
https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2018/01/hospitality-industry-wages-rise-over-10-thanks-to-brexit/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-skills-shortage-wages-rise-net-migration-falls-cipd-report-a8489366.html
I am not interested in freedom of movement as it does not benefit me. Migration is only part of a wide range of strategies to ensure a badly paid insecure de-skilled workforce in the neo-liberal belief that the control of inflation via ensuring low wages will ensure economic growth. This belief is indicated by the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) used in inflation targeting, which is nonsense but they believe it. Migration is not even the most important strategy to ensure low wages, but it is untrue to suggest that a flexible workforce that cannot even in many cases claim benefits does not contribute to a downward pressure on wages, they after all contribute to the ‘reserve army of the unemployed’ as Marx put it. De industrialisation, welfare conditionality, the crushing of unions, a means tested poverty trap, a minimum wage set so low it encourages low wages by allowing a collusion point for employers, personal debt and the move to more flexible, and fake self employment are more of an issue in controlling wages, but migration is useful for government and employers in sectors that cannot be offshored to drive down costs, such as in construction and in the care sector. A reasonably open labour market without crushing wages terms and conditions is possible but would require a government less committed to crushing the poor, after the betrayal of the new labour government you cannot expect the low paid to support free movement until we have a government committed to reducing inequality, and after these policies are introduced. A ‘Labour’ government having the same MPs that ensured low wages and widening inequality under Blair is not credible, so the 184 labour MPs who abstained on the 2015 welfare bill would have to be expelled from the party before labour could be a credible anti inequality party. Iceland is part of Schengen while remaining one of the most equal OECD countries, but have a government not committed to crushing the poor.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/24/former-bank-governor-encouraged-eastern-european-immigration
States:
“King pressed the case to open the labour market without transition on the grounds that it would help lower wage growth and inflation, address supply bottlenecks in a fast-growing pre-financial crisis economy, and help keep interest rates low,” he said.
I also fail to see what is progressive about discrimination between EU, mostly white migration and non EU migration? When people migrate into the UK they must have the same eligibility of benefits as UK nationals as the desperate will work for less. A points based system (that already exists for non EU nationals) without targets or a minimum income requirement equalised between EU and non EU, with the criteria adjusted to manage migration without the hostile environment would be a better compromise. You cannot have free movement within capitalism, as the cost is always born by the poor. It is not the fault of migrants who are even more exploited than UK nationals but of exploitative employers.
Labour shortages would be easy to solve, given the will if the unemployed did not have any financial benefit from working means tested out of existence via Universal Credit or Tax Credit. A citizens income could help eliminate this means tested poverty trap. Far too often migration has been used by UK employers and the UK government to avoid paying for training a workforce and asset strip the skilled labour from poor countries that cannot afford to lose or train skilled labour, exactly what is progressive about asset stripping skilled labour from poor countries?
I could not care less if small business that cannot make a profit unless it pays poverty wages go bankrupt, if their wage bill has to be topped up via Universal Credit or Tax Credits at the taxpayers expense to make a profit they have no right to be in business, they are just parasitic on the UK economy. Just how many pointless coffee shops does the UK economy need? Why not go back to a real economy creating real income, as selling each other sandwiches subsidised by the taxpayer, with a widening trade deficit goosed by one housing bubble after another and financial innovation is not a sustainable economy, this would require massive state aid and a government prepared to use it.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-accelerating-rate-unemployment.asp
Only increased because they had flatlined for around a decade…but still low
“I also find it irresistibly hilarious that the large majority of those who voted Brexit and voted Tory, who were primarily motivated by racism, will as a consequence face a substantive surge in non-white immigration. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at that.”
If I was still talking to my Powellite neighbours I would love to tell them that their voting for Brexit has led to a rise in non-white immigration. I hinted to the same effect to them before when Theresa May was begging for Indian investment and all she could offer the Indian investors was visas, in a racket that seemed very similar to how Chinese gangster-political figures are allowed to distribute student places (which come with visas) at British universities, in a cushy arrangement with university administrators. But nothing I could say would do anything to dent my neighbours’ racial hatred or give them an ounce of logic in their tiny little brains. Racist scum, i.e. a large part of the population, seriously believe that they are ever more justified by the events of the past few years, with e.g. non-whites stabbing whites in the street with large knives, and so on. It’s like talking to a wrestling-watching Trump voter from the US. Whenever a gun nut massacres 50 people, the said Trump voter “thinks” restrictions on gun ownership should be loosened. I encountered one of these shit-for-brains types earlier today, who thought the “second amendment” meant “the second most important right in the constitution”. The racist morons aren’t recovering from their sickness at all. They’re getting ready for the bloodbath they’ve always wanted, “because”….well it’s not logical…probably because they’re too f***ing stupid to form their own opinion on how and why social conditions are going so drastically downhill, “therefore” they blame the non-whites who they resent walking down the street “as if they own the place”. They’re too cretinous to criticise the real social hierarchy – schoolteachers, medics, and crooked c***s down at the council being the highest levels of the social hierarchy they usually come into contact with off-screen.
The elite in Britain is deliberately moving this country and other European countries towards race war.
Immigration is the top political and social issue in most minds. It has been for 4 years, and in that position it is looming ever larger.
Priti Patel and those behind her will probably get Philip Rutnam out of his cushy civil service office. I’m sure somebody must have something on him. Nobody’s indispensable.
When Cummings defied the Commons’ DCMS committee, he should have been jailed.
When Priti Patel was caught committing treason, she should have been jailed too.
When Boris Johnson refused to say
“No I do not agree with the man I am responsible for hiring that blacks are on average born inferior to whites. That is a despicable and insane racist view that I completely and utterly reject. I apologise for this man’s having been hired, which was my responsibility and I made a mistake. I will cooperate fully with an inquiry into how a person who holds and expresses such disgusting views ever got given a contract“,
some kind of “popular front” of non-racists, including the trade unions (remember them?) and including even Tory MPs who wanted to participate (if any existed), should have called a general strike. I know that sounds ridiculous because it was of course a very long way from happening. That’s the point. That shows us how much the boot is very much on the other foot. The prognosis is very bad. Nothing that’s going in the right direction is happening. Everything that’s happening is going in the wrong direction. The enemy are invading undefended territory.
Compare with after Trump was elected, when in fact there was large-scale resistance to his immigration policy, including by senior public officials.
Meanwhile it’s interesting that the entire media, which has been encouraging “copycat” violence for years, seems to have been told not to put the word “Turks” in any headline regarding the shooting in Germany. They’re only using “Turkish” in headlines about “Turkish activists held on terror charges” – they don’t want to talk about Turks being the victims of a fascist terror attack in Europe. They’re saying “shisha” instead. In other words, they’re making a f*ck-sh*t sneering reference to food with a non-English name that Daily Mail readers like to think about non-white people eating because it makes them seem more “foreign”. What are they going to say next – “Remove Kebab”?
I sometimes think the left hasn’t got a clue about how racism works, how racists actually “think”, and how propaganda is designed that hooks them and gives them what they want in order to lead them on.
Shisha is a block of tobacco bound by molasses that’s smoked in a hookah. The German shootings took place at cafes catering to shisha smokers. Not kebab shops.
“Remove kebab” was for the far right a “joky” almost Pepe-style way of saying “let’s have a war against the Muslims and dark-skinned immigrants and descendants of immigrants in Europe until they’re all expelled”. “Shisha” is a non-English word that most people in Britain won’t have heard before. This is why it’s in the headlines. The headlines aren’t saying “Neo-Nazi shoots dead Turks and Kurds in German cafe”. The use of the word “shisha” IN THE HEADLINES, and RATHER THAN AN EXPLICIT REFERENCE TO THE VICTIMS’ ETHNICITY, is similar to how white racist Christians won’t say that Muslims believe in God – they will say Muslims believe in some strange and probably devilish foreigner entity called “Allah”.
The ethnicity of the victims in Hanau is left to moronic punters as something that they infer and are pleased with themselves when they do. The message they “hear” is “Well those dark-skinned foreigners were asking for it, living in our lands, thinking they were safe having installed their foreign culture here, weren’t they?”
Probably half the population in Britain, when they hear a news story about a person who has done this or that or the other, think “is he black or otherwise descended from immigrants?” Then
* if he is someone who has done something bad, they think to themselves “Told you so”;
* if he is someone who has had something bad done to him, they think “Well he was asking for it, wasn’t he?”
* and in the case that he is black or immigrant or immigrant-descended and has had something bad done to him by another person who is also in that group of demographics, they think “I wish they’d take their squabbles back to their own countries”.
The left has little or no understanding of this, because even if they ever meet an uneducated lower middle-class or working class person they won’t want to find out how they think, for the same reason that if they ever use public transport they wouldn’t want to sit on a seat that a proletarian has just beeing sitting on.
On the 9am BBC Radio 4 news bulletin this morning (I looked for the audio online so that I could make an mp3 and upload it and post a link, but I couldn’t find it) the newsreader referred to some of the victims as “believed to be Kurdish”, at the end of a sentence, using falling intonation, and with a tone of disgust that would be more appropriate for referring to how a paedophile killer kept infants chained in his cellar.
Radio and television reports are different from newspaper articles including online newspaper articles, in that in the latter type of communication the message mostly comes across through the headline, strapline, picture and caption (in that order), whereas with radio and television a lot can be put across in a sentence that’s in the middle of a report, not just with word choice but also with tone of voice. A LOT!
We’re THAT CLOSE to a Night of the Broken Glass or similar act (which may be of unexpected type) that shakes the culture and moves us on to a new level.
I presume the extremely obvious and blundering proxy racism from No 10 this week was designed to lead us to believe that HMG would hate to have more African, Indian or other immigrants. The devil’s plan is weak.
Reversing every statement from this pack of irredeemable liars might not get you to the actual truth but something like the truth. Wikipedian says: “Patel was born in London to a Ugandan-Indian family.”
So logically the target immigrants will follow the compass of the incumbent Home Secretary.
It always has before. For Patel presumably home could be any of UK, India, Uganda, or Israel.
Dunno about “blundering”. Sabisky may have departed, but what was his role anyway? Has the outfit he was associated with, called Maby.app still got a contract with Number 10? (I suspect the answer is yes). And a contract to do what? What was co-founder Michael Story’s time at MGIMO, Moscow’s elite college run by the Russian Foreign Ministry, all about? These are utterly obvious questions, but they’re not being asked by our friends in the noble profession of journalism, because none have them got the guts.
There are far to many migrants hear already and the more we get the more we will need to look after them it’s a no win situation for us our hospitals schools doctors surgeries are all clogged up because of them and that’s the truth it’s a buininess mans paradise whereas before he ha to build a factory abroad he can have his cheap labour coming in to him here and keep local people on low wages he should be responsible for the Incomers medical needs and housing needs and we will see how cheap his incoming labour would be then ??? But no we have to pay the price for that I am 81years old I had my 16 th., birthday in Germany serving in the 2nd,. Battalion Scots Guards i was never asked if I wanted all these changes immigration and doing away with hanging etc., we live in a delusion of democracy but it really is dictatorship with no common sense
So you were 15 when you joined the army, @Blair?
How do you feel about black people working in British hospitals? Does it make you angry?
As i say below the idiocy of thinking you had a choice – who the fuck asked you about your conscription or regiment deployment anywhere? 81? Time to grow up before it’s too late.
@Blair – You say you were never asked about immigration and hanging, but there were several political parties that you could have voted for in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who opposed non-white immigration, supported the expulsion of many non-white immigrants, and promised to bring back hanging. I mean parties such as the National Front and the British National Party. They usually stood candidates in elections. Did you vote for them? If not, why not? I’m guessing that you probably support aims such as “Keep Britain White” and “Bring Back Hanging” but you probably didn’t vote for these parties because you wish the aims to be seen as “respectable” rather than associated with bunches of tattooed semi-literate skinheads. I’m guessing. I may be wrong. Would that be an accurate description of your view? If not, please correct me, because I am trying to understand where you’re coming from, not to distort or misrepresent it.
The other question is this: as (apparently) a supporter of the reintroduction of the death penalty, does it have to be hanging, or would any method be equally good as far as you are concerned?
Spot on
A throrough dissection and revelation of the diseased innards of our regime by CM.
The simple misconception that the neolib Thatchers bastard grandkids in a coup government with its junta installed beany hats and alt-right designer outfits and retro aristo anglo supremacist eugenist uncivil servants, wanted to stop cheap labour was and is a lie.
The same when they cry about ‘over population’ but happily sprog out half a dozen of the right babies of their own.
The Austerity trick to impoverish the majority who’s real wages have diminished well below the ‘min’ supposedly required for the new immigrants was just another trick to fool them into being anti EU by being anti immigrant.
Not because it necessarily mattered how they voted – that referendum was fixed ( again by the privatising of the Electoral Commission under Cameron/Clegg) but to provide the patina and mood music as the great brexit escape long planned and paid for by plutocrats, many in the US, was perpetrated upon us. So that we wouldn’t smell that rat.
It was all done in aid of the ancient, fast crumbling Empire, it’s ancient City, to protect themselves from the EU they could no longer control or destroy from the inside. Because of the greater allignment and regulations and leveller playing fiel; Also of the inevitable allignment of the EU-EA. Long put off by setting Germany and Russia against each other and other such reasons involving money and ultimate power and the Anglo Imperial world order.
The plan is and was a HARD brexit. A creation of Singapore on Thames , that leaves the City carrying on with its unregulated, tax avoiding, money laundering, off-shoring, trust funding war mongering and piracy. The ‘free-zones’ being the cover for it – there will only be one free-zone that succeeds – The City – and it won’t be making any widgets and it won’t be employing any more.
Once they have achieved that grand scheme we will be allowed to rush back into the EU under the guise of ‘the people realise they wanted to stay European with the 4 freedoms after all – at least they were all white! – and who are we to deny the racist people…
Of course the now ‘free’ City will not be partaking in the EU and be independent like the Vatican is… and since it won’t be exporting anything to the EU it won’t be a problem like NI was. And of course any imports into the City from the EU will also be free of any EU regulation so no pesky reporting of who or what money from anywhere or the need for a level playing field for the teensy weeny Square Mile.
It has always been a charade from being bounced into the EU to being bounced out for the great geo-politic ancient gamers.
@Dungroanian. Agreed it’s about a cliffedge Brexit and the City. But in your scenario, why would the EU allow a Britain minus the City/Singapore-on-Thames to join? It’d be 10 times worse a case than Portugal-Italy-Ireland-Greece-Spain.
The scenario is that the City calculated that a hard brexit removes ALL EU obligations, followed by removing the City from the UK, followed by letting the UK go back in. The EU would be legally unable to stop that entry or morally.
Like saying Italy couldn’t be in EU if Vatican wasn’t.
Simplistic I know, but the robber barons have never needed to be subtle. And don’t forget there are plenty of European aristo/banker ancients who are also City.
Their main priority is not the EU but themselves and their City allies as always – even if some of them hold high EU office…
You mean literally the City of London then (where hardly anyone lives), plus maybe Canary Wharf, and perhaps to include hedge fund offices in St James’s as exclaves (cf. the Palace of Castel Gandolfo), not the whole of Greater London? I think we agree the British economy is dominated by the City. If the City were to leave Britain, Britain might lose say 25% or 50% of its money. It would be a complete basket case. The City would make sure of that. It keeps a very tight grip – almost everything in the British economy is “financialised”. Even local councils run on huge debt and insurance policies. Similar statements can be made about the transport system, the universities, the health services. City loonies think the City is where wealth is created and the rest of the British economy is for skivers, beggars, and parasites. Britain without the City might have problems establishing a central bank that had creditor confidence. Or does Britain keep the Bank of England in this scenario? Would the City allow that? The scenario makes me think of the Arab world, basically a bunch of impoverished third world countries surrounding an area run by filthy rich sovereign dictatorships. This all said, yes. Letting the quality of life go to hell in most of the rest of Britain is great for the City, however one might colour the map.
N_
It is important to draw a dustiction between the financial services industry (regular retail and merchant bankers, insurance, fund managers etc) AND the Ancient City – the activities of which do not see the light of day in the UK’s GNI/GNP and on which almost zero tax is garnered by HMT (the odd income tax aside for workers who are not classed as non-doms.
The Corporation of London has its own laws and officials – hell the Queen of England needs permission to enter the Square Mile (its bigger btw) !
That ancient bankers City is one of the centres of that ancient bankers empire which has 10’s if not 100’s of Trillions under its management – none if it declared in any countries legitimate figures.
Of course the Financial Services industries ( banks included) need to operate transparently and be part of the economies where they operate and pay their taxes accordingly- Brexit has nothing to do with them and they have all registered within the EU within months – either in Dublin or Franfurt or Paris.
@Dungroanin – Where would you place Lloyd’s insurance market, the Baltic Exchange, the Bank of England, and the London Stock Exchange, none of which are ancient, or firms such as Rothschilds that developed from the “acceptance houses”?
I have no idea how often e.g. the charters of the livery companies get amended, but I doubt they’re all in their original form. Certainly other chartered bodies have their charters amended from time to time.
It was interesting how the City of London Corporation stepped in to rehouse some of the survivors of the Grenfell fire, presumably for brand PR reasons, showing how the image of London affects the global brand of the City, at least sometimes. Anything big to do with the London brand and they want to be able to have a strong influence even if they decide to let the peasants get on with it, which is probably similar to the Wallenberg family’s position regarding Sweden.
In the run-up to the referendum, the City of London Corporation eventually decided to say it was pro-Remain, but it seemed very lukewarm about it. All those trillions give the City enormous power, and it could have helped Remain in a much bigger way if it wanted to.
Dave’s Deal hinged around what scope the City would have on the continent. I still haven’t worked out which side was more on the offensive.
The BoE is the original city. Set up with private shareholders. Like the Fed.
All the others are legitimate and registered and pay their due taxes.
Try and draw the line between the ancients and the current conflation.
It is a fact.
Daves task was to pull the WHOLE out of the EU as the only means of saving the ancient money launderers of the world from the EU’s evolving regulations. They had git away with it because of our veto which became ineffective. He went to the EU to demand the ancient City be left out of the new rules and when refused the Brexit was effected.
The ancient City could have moved to the Bahamas or elsewhere but they don’t want to leave their palaces and estates.
Craig, thank you for this informed and well reasoned piece, it is what has been missing in the whole debate about immigration. Before you provided a link I was not aware of the Migration Watch website, it truly is poisonous, I was previously unaware of it’s founder, Lord Deddington, surely this man’s existence is an argument for the abolition of peerages and the House of Lords.
One wonders how this is going to work (unless that’s the plan that it doesn’t ) when the people wishing to come here need to first have a job to come to, and secondly they must meet the minimum wage standard before entering the UK.
As for immigration outwith the EU especially India, I’d imagine that Modi and Johnson, have initially concluded some sort of free trade deal, having met late last year to discuss it. Which would’ve surely included movement from India to the UK.
There will be hundreds of thousands of Indians coming – mainly to wipe arses and feed the demented racist pensioners that their own kids hate.
There will also be hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongese on the way as they fail to grab back Hong Kong as the off-shore haven off China – they have legal rights to come WITHOUT points based systems.
They’ll be running all the small businesses.
The current indigenous brits (of all shades) will be joining them as the servile classes that we have been being brainwashed into for the last few decades of dumbing down and taking in their future roles :- nonstop news and msm (mass daily perception management), daily football (fake solidarity and diversion of energy), daily soaps (fake society and neo religion), x-factor (entertainers), master chef (kitchen porters), love island (sex workers) – and the big daddy and culmination of the costume dramas, Downton Abbey (the restoration of the prewar old class divide of Aristos and their servants and the rest hoi polloi imprisoned in their parishes as serfs).
Add in dumb hollywood super hero fantasy, video games, porn and gambling and it becomes clear how the self imposed servitude has been cleverly implemented across the crumbling Empire.
There could be less Pakistani, Afghan or Somalian immigration, those places where real supremacists rule the roost. Secular amongst them will have non-Madrassa education so might well qualify.
The Tories are shaping immigration around the economy now but they seem to have forgotten about UK Culture – what is left of it..
The Anglo Imperialists need to keep their old East India Company (which is the British Empire and therfore UK ‘culture’) original conquest (india) on side to try and keep it away from the Shanghai Cooperative Organisation (China, Russia ..) – India is already suffering by choising to remain out of BRI – while Pakistan, Myanmar and most of SEAsia benefits from mega infrastructure investment.
The price for that is bigger Anglo -Indian access to the putrid ‘Mother Country’.
The HongKongese have LEGAL right to arrive and can not be stopped.
The UK will look like the Empire it constructed worldwide but on this island – nowt particularly to object about is there? You makes your bed and all that. REJOICE instead!
I think you’ll find that plasterers and electrician are considered as skilled everywhere. Of cpirse there’s the question of what formal qualifications and training can be proved.
Nope in a general context people doing essentially DIY for other people the typical white van man are not considered skilled
The plan is to create a labour shortage in low-skilled low paid work. This system will almost certainly achieve that. Its quite clever, if you really think about it.
What will be seen is the increase in productivity that the UK has been lacking for years. Why invest in a machine when you can get super cheap labour ? Human labour is a commodity, reduce the supply of the commodity and its value increases. Wages will rise, and with it most peoples living standards. As with all systems there will be winners and losers.
Narrowing down Brexit and a Tory win to simple Racism is complete nonsense although it fits with the general echo chamber sentiment that is the core of this website, it also massively misses the point.
“Wages will rise, and with it most peoples living standards. ”
We shall see but I don’t think so. As Craig says there are provisions to lower the entry requirements for particular jobs.
While those who voted for Brexit and want far fewer immigrants may not think they are racists I feel that they must come pretty close. The way the speak suggests they view every immigrant as a burden. Not as a normal person whose work benefits this country. You can’t really blame immigrants for overloaded services. The migrants we see are workers and could be working in the NHS or building homes if the government chose to invest the money that way.
Not everybody voted Brexit for racist reasons. As ever, our racist political class shifted the blame onto the working class through an incessant lying, propaganda campaign. Sure, there are racists (everywhere) and there always has been, this is not news. But it sure is convenient to shift the blame on to the working class, who seem to get the blame for everything that ails capitalism.
Oh, come on, low skilled labor plan? In reality it’s all about saving the state from economic migrants who throughout their lifetimes won’t make a net contribution to the economy. Despite the laughable doctors, engineers and architects narrative, the vast majority are either unwilling or incapable seeking work, they are an incredible drain on welfare system, education and healthcare. Those of you with heads buried so deep may yet see daylight when the government is forced to raid your pensions, reduce your entitlements and restrict your freedoms to mitigate the damage that has already been done.
@ Spencer,
Most people throughout their lives do not make an economic contribution to the economy. Even those in work generally cost more to look after than they ever pay in taxes. Starting from the day you are born to the day you die.
My personal view is that we are lumping everyone in to the immigrants category, instead of separating out immigrants and migrant workers. As a general rule of thumb most immigrants cost no more than a indigenous person to look after. The burden is migrant workforce, who’s main objective is to save as much money as possible and either send it home or return home with it. However without migrant workers I’m not sure who is going to pick the crops and do the jobs frankly most natural born people refuse to do.
Australia deals with this by allowing people short working visa’s typically 6 months, that helps fill the seasonal vacancies. I don’t see such a plan in the UKs new policy which is being pushed as an Australia style system.
@Mighty…
I suspect Xenophobia is much more prevalent than racism in a lot of peoples mind set. Racism is fairly specific, Xenophobia covers a wider range of sins. This doesn’t make the UK or England different from literally any other country in the world. Xenophobia is inherent in the Human Species. If we really want less migration / immigration / asylum then we need to start by not bombing the shit out of people homes.
“On average, the employment rate of migrants (74%) was similar to the UK born (76%) in 2018. However, there were substantial differences between men and women. The employment rate of foreign-born men (83%) was higher than for UK born men (79%). Most country-of-origin groups had higher employment rates than UK men, except for men born in East and Southeast Asia (71%), and in MENA and Central Asia (68%). Among women, all of the country-of-origin groups had lower employment rates than UK-born women (66% vs 72%) with the exception of women from EU countries.”
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-labour-market-an-overview/
While Migration watch figures are usually good it does spin them in an anti-migration way, migrationobservatory has a more academic voice.
Interestingly EU migrants tend to be more skilled and are more likely to have a job than someone from the UK. GO Brexit?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/20/conservatives-immigration-plan-ideology-economics-low-wages
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/20/care-workers-like-me-arent-low-skilled-these-immigration-rules-will-risk-lives
Useful addenda.
I am always intrigued that many politicians, advocating the desirability of continued net immigration at rates of about 300000 per annum, are the same individuals asking for more affordable homes. Can no one in England or Scotland see that there is a problem with having to build the equivalent of Newcastle every year just to stand still on housing provision? This problem has nothing to do with race.
This morning on Radio 4 they were talking about land-hoarding, apparently there has been planning permission for 100,000 houses for over a decade, which have not been constructed/sold.
As the greedy landowners/developers, hang low while the value of the property sky-rockets.
They are not making any more land.
So almost every year, land prices go up.
We cannot continue to have unlimited immigration, even if that makes us horrible racists.
Incidentally Germany is now feeling the pinch, partially Donald Trump and his trade wars, partially Brexit, partially the moribund E.U. and now exasperated by Wuhan Oblivion or fear thereof.
I think you will need to add a few noughts there.
‘Councils have hit back at possible government moves to strip them of planning powers to speed up housebuilding by releasing analysis that shows more than a million so-far unbuilt homes have already been granted planning permission in the last decade.
The Local Government Association said its analysis found 2,564,600 units had been given planning permission since 2009-10 and 1,530,680 had been constructed. It said this showed councils were not the block to the government’s target of creating 300,000 new homes a year.’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/20/councils-say-1m-homes-given-go-ahead-but-not-yet-built
Craig, you mention Migration Watch as being correct on two points, and imply that otherwise they are racist liars could you give some examples of their racist lies ?
“We are surprised Migration Watch is concerned with seasonal workers in agriculture as for decades seasonal workers have come in to pick fruit and veg and gone home again. Seasonal workers in our sector are not an immigration issue.
“This country has a labour shortage. With eight million people not born in the UK living and working here of which 3.3 million are from the EEA (source AHDB) and an unemployment rate of just 1.64 million, we do not have enough workers for all the jobs in the UK.”
https://www.nfuonline.com/news/latest-news/nfu-responds-to-migration-watch-uk-report/
This article published in the Torygraph under the byline of Sherelle Jacobs could have been written by Dominic Cummings himself:
“Unlike bamboozled pundits, the public completely gets the Cummings Project”
“Mr Cummings thinks that, to make matters worse, our politicians are pathetically out of their depth. His solution is to cull the eloquent blaggers who dominate the ruling class and replace them with experts in their field who have strong ethics, excellent project management skills and a powerful capacity for rational thought. He believes that such a goal is so subversive to vested interests that it can only be attempted when the system is in a state of shock – which is where an event like Brexit comes in handy.”
What is this sh*te? Cummings doesn’t say anywhere that he wants experts who have “strong ethics”.
In fact it probably was written by Cummings. The reference to “uninvestigated burglaries” sounds just like him. Read this blog post that he wrote in 2018 and then tell me he didn’t write “Jacobs’s” piece in the Torygraph
“Jacobs” continues
“Millions of crimes pass unreported because the basic algorithm of modern policing is to categorise and prioritise crime rather than indiscriminately solve it.”
Who would write the word “algorithm” there other than Cummings?
A quick check for previous uses of the word “algorithm” in Jacobs’s work suggests she has only ever used it before in the “luvvie” sense of “a decision made by a computer program run by a big company that has lots of information about you”. She has probably never used it before in the sense of “a sequence of steps”. I doubt she knows what it means.
Of course her autocorrect might have turned “aim” into “algorithm” and she thought “I’ll run with that – that sounds impressive”. More likely, though, Cummings hacked the piece out and said “Check this through and then put it out for me, would you, love?”
Cummings strikes me as a charlatan. Just look at his blog. It is full of name-dropping and “concepts” without ever dealing with them in any depth. Just compare them with texts written by people who really understand what they are writing about. It’s all just a load of superficial bullshit.
I’m not sure Cummings wrote the piece, but he may well have had some input into it.
“Algorithm” has become a fad word I’m afraid. And people who use it in an off-hand way hardly ever have the faintest idea what they’re talking about.
“Millions of crimes pass unreported because the basic algorithm of modern policing is to categorise and prioritise crime rather than indiscriminately solve it.”
This is just complete nonsense from beginning to end. So is she suggesting we should devote the same resources to solving the theft of a bicycle as to solving an armed bank robbery? Because this is what the sentence literally means.
Her claiming that Cummings somehow wants to “save humanity” because “the system is broken” is a complete joke.
It is sad that supposedly serious newspapers have taken to printing such complete rubbish. What happened to the serious sensible conservatives? The current “conservatives” must be taking some strange pills, either that or they were all batshit crazy to begin with.
Surely Cummings is more of a reflection of our ‘glorious leader’ Bojo’s utter cluelessness. Bojo is a total buffoon. In any case, the govt is a fiction, a handful of giant corporations now constitute the ‘government’. Mussolini called it the ‘corporate security state’ and ‘we’ voted them in. You get what you pay for.
@ N_ February 20, 2020 at 15:09
A common trick, as Udo Ulfkotte expllains in his book (English translation: ‘Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA: A Confession from the Profession’). In his case it was spooks who wrote articles, and they were entered in the Press under Udo’s and other journalists names, as though they had written them.
I always thought the referendum was high risk, because the purpose was to use Remain to join the Euro and fully integrate UK within EU. And Austerity (and PFI) was promoted to keep UK within the rules for joining the Euro. Thankfully Leave won, which ends Austerity, but in the short-term a soft-Brexit was a a sensible compromise, initially offered by Labour, but then killed by Zionists under guise of Remain to depose Corbyn, deemed the real enemy.
You say there used to be a quality control exercised by professionals over immigration (acting against an open door) and regret its demise due to Austerity, but welcome an increase in quantity, open door, due to professionalism being replaced by a points system. Duh!
Its true many voters used Brexit to sensibly protest for a cut in immigration, and it may be funny if this results in more immigration, but Ponzi immigration is the business model and was always going to happen in or out of EU, because as you acknowledge the rules are there to be circumvented. The power of Brexit is to change the system, which it could yet do, if Farage launches his Reform Party.
Dave, correct.
PFI and Austerity are children of our membership of the E.U.
As our government can create as much money via the Bank of England, as is thought useful, we will no longer need PFI.
It will be the hardest of Brexit, before the end of this year. We no longer need Austerity, we need to regain our feeling of worth, as free people
not as peasants of Brussels.
Yes when you control your own money, money is no object, the only problem is having something to spend it on and having the means to do so. For example if one man can only dig one hole a day and is paid £10 the treasury only needs to print one £10 note. If the Treasury prints two £10 notes it results in inflation, but if a second man can be found to dig a hole, it isn’t but just ensures money is created to match work done.
The reason for the financial crash was because control of the money supply was taken away from the Bank of England (by New Labour) and given to a new Financial Services Agency with a remit to let rip, probably again to facilitate the mickey-house accounting to get around the Euro joining rules.
Dave – “The reason for the financial crash was because control of the money supply was taken away from the Bank of England (by New Labour)”
So, you believe that Lehman brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns all went bankrupt in 2008 because of the actions of New Labour? AIG were also bankrupt, but they had to be bailed out so that Goldman Sachs didn’t go bankrupt. RBS went bankrupt because they bought a Dutch bank with all sorts of dodgy mortgage backed securities given triple A ratings by US ratings agencies.
Nearly all the American malpractice, outlawed in USA, took place in the City of London due to de-regulation. My source Private Eye!
Free People…lol…
Dave
“….Initially offered by Labour,…..”
I think you will find that it was the SNP who proposed a soft Brexit first.
No SNP pedalled the lie of Tory (and Lab) austerity, when it was always EU austerity to save the Euro. SNP wanted to leap out of the pan into the fire, out of EU austerity within UK, into EU austerity in EU.
Dave
The Scotgov prepared a paper not long after the EU referendum proposing staying in the Single market and customs union long before Labour started to dither about whether they wanted to stay in the EU of not. That is a fact.
SNP pedalled no Britnat lies re austerity or the Euro. Most Britnats say Scotland wouldn’t get in the EU – you can’t have it both ways. SNP do not have a policy of joining the Euro.
Soft-Brexit is only remain in Customs Union. Staying in Single Market doesn’t restore control of borders. The EU project is to create a European Super-State so all members are treaty obligated to join Euro. When Maastricht signed UK got a temporary opt-out, but still obligated to join, and so would Scotland.
Dave
That is your opinion of what a soft Brexit is – no more no less. You can leave the EU and still be in the single market and customs union. At this point in time we have left the EU but we are still in the single market and customs union.
No sorry no obligation to join Euro. That is your opinion of the future of the EU.
The good thing about the EU is they don’t say you can’t have a referendum to see if you want to leave.
Britnat Brexiteers say Scotland can’t join the EU but then contradict themselves by saying you must join the Euro. Wrong on both counts.
If England and Wales want to leave the EU then fine. Why do you think you have the right to drag Scotland along with you?
The single market is central to the creation of the super-state, which is why the rules outlaw nationalisation and why the Labour manifesto couldn’t have been implemented without Leave, because nationalisation is deemed a national restrictive practice to the single market.
Presumably once the super-state is created you could then have pan-European nationalisation, but the single-market requires all companies throughout the EU to harmonise their standards, even if they are not trading within EU, so unlike the Customs Union (the old Common Market) whilst its Leave its not soft!
Dave
That is your personal opinion of a soft Brexit definition. Others have their own.
That is your personal opinion of the EUs future. Others have their own.
Rubbish
Think Locally Act Globally. Why not house the immigrants overseas?
Another Westminster policy that is so wrong for Scotland. Even BBC Reporting Scotland took the Scottish Gov side on this in their reporting and for the first time ever took a strong stance against the UK gov policy.
Now if even the Britnats at Propaganda Quay are outraged at this policy you know how bad it will be for Scotland.
We don’t vote for these policies but as usual we get what England votes for.
The real union dividend:
sectarianism; policies that England wants but are detrimental to Scotland; a faux democracy; our resources stolen; nuclear weapons adjacent to our largest city; illegal wars; munitions and radioactive waste dumped in Scotland; propaganda pumped into our homes; our EU citizenship removed against our will and Britnat politicians willing to lie their faces off to serve their Westminster masters in the hope they get on the gravy train in the House of Lords.
Let’s summarise: “I’d rather have white people from the EU coming to Britain than black or brown skinned people from Ghana or India.”
No, actually I would rather have all of them. But I suspect that a great many Brexit voters would be of the view you outline.
Ethnicity is part of our cultural identity and if you were surrounded by people of a different ethnicity you would feel the difference. Therefore type and number of immigrants impacts on cultural identity and so people with a sense of patriotism and community will always initially object to immigration, even if some is approved.
But if you are a “civic nationalist” with no objection in theory to transplanting London’s population to Scotland and vice versa, as long as the new arrivals call themselves Scottish, I don’t think SNP fortunes would survive contact with the electorate.
You would feel the difference if you are racist
And in a zoo you would feel the difference is you are speciest!
Craig this does not make any sense, if you support the UK remaining in the single market by definition the UK cannot have a open border with non EU nations and de facto support fortress Europe. By definition a single market and a customs union is exclusive of those outside the single market.
This “brexiteers are racists” and we should welcome the change to undercut their wages by even more is the kind of pure BBC elitism that will get destroyed just as soon as a party puts two and two together and promotes policies that work for the 75% of Brits that have seen no wage increases in 20 years – black, white, immigrants the lot.
Shame on Craig and his Guardian reading version of Blair/Cameron elitism.
Great comment Michael there are so many people who are blinkered about wages mine and most working class people’s wages in REALITY have been stagnant for mor than 25 years
So the result of your protesting about being “left behind” is that you vote for a Tory charlatan, who will definitely do little to help you.
Support for Assange continues to grow, some may say too little to late.
I feel, sadly, that those sentiments may be correct, we can only guess that if he were to be released tomorrow (he won’t be) what the lasting damage will be?
The Commissioner at the European Council may feel there was/is nothing more she could/can do. That is not true but at least she has said something.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/julian-assange-should-not-be-extradited-due-to-potential-impact-on-press-freedom-and-concerns-about-ill-treatment
OT? Did the ECHR assist Assange?
No they didn’t!
International Law now resides in the hand of politicians and their string pullers.
Anyone that thinks that Scotland in the control of the EU is a panacea for and protection againt Human Rights abuses are fooling themselves.
Has the ECHR considered JA?
You know that it is not a EU institution?
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/fact-figures/whats-the-difference-between-the-european-convention-on-human-rights-the-european-court-of-human-rights-and-the-european-court-of-justice/#
Thinking of Julian in his torment.
WATCH harrowing footage of 2007 Baghdad killings projected onto UK parliament wall in protest against Assange’s extradition
https://www.rt.com/uk/481270-assange-projection-protest-parliament/
Global protest on Monday 24th February 2020
https://m.facebook.com/freeassangeglobalprotest/
eg Amsterdam https://m.facebook.com/events/225668388466985/
Which is the mainstream Free Julian Assange site to follow?
@ Dave February 20, 2020 at 17:37
Here are a couple of Facebook sites:
Londoners Protect Julian Assange and U.K. Actions 4 Assange!
All true and all obvious from the start of the whole Brexit debacle. I do believe some of the disaffected voters of Bradford, Barnsley and Blackburn genuinely believe the brown faces that so offend them originated from the EU. These voters are going to have the shock of their lifetimes.
I think the links between Patel and Islamophobic groups should be probed, too. She’s supposed to be cosy with the Indian government (heading for ethnic cleansing) as well as Israel. A most unsuitable person to be HomeSec, and that’s before you take into account her nutty hard-right views and lack of intelligence.
Well Mr. Murray, you can no doubt afford to laugh. Another who has doubtless never spent time in a dole queue, or been threatened with benefit stoppage for not finding non-existent work.
Meanwhile, the immigrant gang master gets £500 a week to weed a field in a day. I could not do it. We had to work via an agency, ‘cards-in.’ The agencies all went out of business. The gang master then pays the illegals £2 an hour, and threatens them with eviction from their one bedroom flat, complete with filthy mattresses on the deck, if they don’t deliver on what he has promised the land-owner. That’s the real dirty secret of the cheap food and services that you consume. A ‘Free Market’ in anything never did the worker (foreign or native) any good; only the owners benefit.
All this started with a hotel in London, offering rooms at prices no competitor could match. Once the secret was out – well, the rest is history. It was Gresham’s Law in action but concerning labour, not money.
You have no idea.
There will be trouble coming down the pike in the next year to eighteen months – every man for himself.
‘Racist’ indeed.
Magic Robot
These Bojobumcheek Tories idea about mental health is to drive down working conditions and speed up the labelling of the resulting mental health problems. Yes, they say, mental health is very important, while refusing to pay the pittance even of subsistence in the UK.
That said, most of them, like Sir Dunk, receive so many millions of gravy training that they are completely unaware of reality. I am 65 and we all knew we had but a house before Conervatism cranked the house prices and rents out of our reach. We did not make your problems. We were too busy just scraping ourselves to safety to think what would happen to the next generation.
Now we are told people voted for Tories again because of Brexit. They didn’t. The vote was rigged.
I also came across a number of scams by gangmasters, such as ghost working, where a agency/gangmaster gets to supply a certain number of cleaners, under supplies this number gets the reduced workforce to cover the absent workforce and pockets the difference.
Another is bringing in illegal migrants get them to work a month in hand, then reporting your own workers to migration so you can avoid paying them. Using indentured labour is the obvious constant in all this.
All resulting in a ‘gig economy’ cursed with ‘0 hours contracts’ for the rest (meaning you are no longer ‘unemployed’ as far as the statistics say) having to work any and all hours at multiple jobs.
All for the living wage, of course (otherwise bad publicity for their corporate employers) but no job security at all. I pity any young person faced with this prospect: a home? a family? No chance.
Freedom of movement was benign when member states had broadly similar economies. But a permanently open door to a vast reserve army of low-wage workers is something the likes of Milton Friedman would have prescribed in order to decisively suppress the cost and power of labour in W Europe. It was politically unsustainable in a decade when the Tories decided to inflict austerity on .places that hadn’t experienced an immigrant influx in a thousand years.
It may just be that UK Gov is looking to facilitate opportunities in Commonwealth and Far East as much as in US.