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Wednesday, 7th April 2010

British jobs for British workers...

Fraser Nelson 11:06am

Did you know that there are fewer British-born workers in the private sector than there were in 1997? I'd be surprised if so: these official figures are not released. The Spectator managed to get them, on request from the Office of National Statistics. We use the figures in tomorrow's magazine, but I thought they deserves a little more prominence here. See the graph above, which shines a new light on the boasts Gordon Brown has been making.

He said his Glasgow speech last month that:

"If we had said twelve years ago there would be, even after a global recession, 2.5 million more jobs than in 1997 nobody would have believed us."

No-one would have believed the scale of immigration, or the rapid expansion of the public sector - for these two are the only factors that have pushed the jobs total upwards. I will do a more detailed blog of this later on, but two key figures jump out. In the private sector, there were 288,000 fewer UK-born people working in the private sector in Q3 of last year than there were in 1997. Strip out pension-age workers, and there are 637,000 fewer.

Brown loves to include pension-age people returning to work in his figures for job increase. Strip them out and Immigrants accounted  for 1.64 m of the 1.67m jobs created since 1997 according to another set of unpublished official figures - a staggering 99 percent. Here's the maths:

So Brown should not talk about "creating" new jobs. "Importing" would be be a much better word.

My point here is not that nasty immigrants have taken all our jobs. To the chagrin of CoffeeHousers, I'm a fan of immigration - but my concern is that Brown has used it to cover up the extent of his failure. He's bragging in Glasgow about creating 2.5 million new jobs, but this didn't stop the total on out-of-work benefits staying above 5m throughout the boom years. Immigration has broken the link between economic recovery and falling dole queues - 2.5m extra jobs does no longer means 2.5m fewer people on the dole.  This is a crucial fact which should be borne in mind as a Tory government tries to reduce the dole list of almost 6m as it stands today.

PS: I've had a couple of requests for the raw data, as provided to The Spectator from the ONS. It's for working-age workers, and for all workers over 16 (ie, including pension-age workers).

Filed under: Conservatives (2065 more articles) , Economy (877 more articles) , Employment (135 more articles) , Gordon Brown (906 more articles) , Immigration (187 more articles) , Labour (2007 more articles) , Recession (172 more articles) , UK politics (4890 more articles)

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CW Glasgow

April 7th, 2010 11:25am Report this comment

Fraser,

Are there any statistics for the number of "public sector" employees in 1997 compared with today's number? I presume this would include civil servants, Govt. agency employees, local authority workers and NHS, and possibly other "quangos". I know the NHS numbers alone are remarkable but if these other sectors are on trend, the results are probably mindblowing. CW

Stevie

April 7th, 2010 11:27am Report this comment

What an utter, utter disgrace. If Cameron doesn't repeat these figures-ad nauseum-during the next month then he is throwing away the only sure fire election winner he has.

Greenslime

April 7th, 2010 11:31am Report this comment

Who's surprised? And most of them will likely be Labour voters!!

Them boys don't understand that the private sector has to pay for the public sector and the pips have been squeaking for some time now.

Payback time on May 6

strapworld

April 7th, 2010 11:31am Report this comment

Mr Nelson, spare us another promise on a further blog on immigration!

Waiting in Heathrow Airport last week I noticed very few white British workers. All restaurants and shops, cleaners immigration officers, security and baggage handlers appeared to be Non British. How can this be?

I think it has gone too far now and it will have to be a very brave politician to take this issue on. I doubt that we have any politician up to that job.

Joe Public

April 7th, 2010 11:32am Report this comment

It's been said before...
The only economy Brown understands is economy of truth.

Walsingham's Ghost

April 7th, 2010 11:37am Report this comment

Well done Fraser on digging-out these stats. But will the Conservatives have the 'cojones' to use them on the campaign trail, or will they fear a 'same old racist Tories' backlash?...

WG

Mark M

April 7th, 2010 11:38am Report this comment

Can’t wait for your more detailed piece on this Fraser. Can you please give these figures to Cameron, to hold Brown to account for his immigration policy?
Regarding the Brown quote you give, nobody in 1997 would have believed that borrowing would be higher than income tax receipts either. In fact, unless they are exceedingly overpaid, the entire 6 million strong public sector’s wages are being paid with borrowed money – another thing people in 1997 wouldn’t have believed. Nobody would believe that a government elected claiming ‘prudence’ would double the national debt and will double it again over the next five years. Nobody would have believed that success would be a 6% deficit 6-7 years after a recession. These are the things people would not have believed. The one thing that we can all believe is that whatever figures Brown uses, they will be either a lie or require some serious caveats to get to.

Rainer Unsinn

April 7th, 2010 11:46am Report this comment

Did they not publish a figure that said 52% of those in employment are now in the public sector?

No country can afford that level of parasitic employment

Richard

April 7th, 2010 11:50am Report this comment

Go to any city bar in any country and wait 10 minutes...you will see a Scotsman, Irishman and an Englishman living and working there....Are you against Australian workers or Canadians, south Africans or just blacks Romainians and eastern Europeans. My Polish plumber is the best I have ever used and ceap as chips. The British people have done well out of working abroad why should we prevent others from doing what we have done for centuries.
This economy benefits from foriegn labour in the same way other countries do from ours.

GoodbyeGordon

April 7th, 2010 11:51am Report this comment

Well done Fraser, keep on exposing this dreadful, dishonest man. Gordon Brown is 'The liars Liar'!

Vulture

April 7th, 2010 11:51am Report this comment

Finally waking up to Neathergate Fraser?
It's a bit late, mate.

Mark

April 7th, 2010 11:52am Report this comment

Good to see a Brown deception skewered on hard stats.

But rather than 'importing' jobs has he not been importing workers. Which although living here many repatriate a fair bit of what they earn home. So Brown has 'semi-offshored' many of the jobs he takes credit for.

David B

April 7th, 2010 12:02pm Report this comment

Gordon Brown manipulating statistics surely not!

Beer Moth

April 7th, 2010 12:07pm Report this comment

On the one hand, it is encouraging to see the spotlight being directed onto this situation, and the reality of what has happened to our country being revealed.

On the other hand, it has to be said that until very recently, mass immigration into the country, has been lauded on these pages -still the case in certain quarters - as a natural and beneficent function of the global market; with no regard whatsoever as to the wider consequences.

Congratulations and welcome to the real world, but please: what has caused the change?

PayDirt

April 7th, 2010 12:17pm Report this comment

Still don’t quite see what’s so wrong about immigrants doing jobs the British-born turn down. OK the scale of it maybe is a problem and there is the issue of storing up problems for the future. But these immigrants pay tax, they make the economy more dynamic. So what if benefit claimants prefer to sit it out, tough on them in the long run because they have become an underclass. It’s how to deal with the underclass which is the political problem rather than the level of immigration.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

April 7th, 2010 12:24pm Report this comment

Why the surprise? This is all part of the Masterplan. An ageing, sickly, uneducated native population, many on NHS tranquillisers and drugged to their eyeballs. Easily available abortion, infanticide easier to obtain than honest work. The abortion clinics mainly filled by young native females, no burkahs in sight. NuLabour is fuylfilling its targets.

Dame DeVille

April 7th, 2010 12:43pm Report this comment

I was born abroad, I have worked in the UK and abroad, I am British, I think immigrants are overwhelmingly a good thing and decent people, that work-shy benefit junkies are a massive problem, I intend to vote Conservative as I always do and I work in the public sector but have spent most of my working life in Private Businesses, mostly American owned!

Just thought i'd let you know - the comments about immigration generally posted on coffee house just always over simplify and for me leave a nasty taste. Richard makes the point excellently!

Beer Moth

April 7th, 2010 12:58pm Report this comment

PayDirt

"Still don’t quite see what’s so wrong about immigrants doing jobs the British-born turn down. OK the scale of it maybe is a problem and there is the issue of storing up problems for the future."

So, in fact, you do see. Or doesn't the future matter?

Chris lancashire

April 7th, 2010 12:59pm Report this comment

Richard: I hope you paid your Polish plumber cash.

Richard

April 7th, 2010 1:42pm Report this comment

@Chris

Full payment on an invoice paying VAT to boot.
I think he actually employes two english apprentices as well......they should get a better training than they would working for a Cowboy plimber from Pimlico.

Paul Hawkins

April 7th, 2010 3:03pm Report this comment

Richard, I take it your observations are based on personal evidence? If not,how can you make such assertions? I also think the major leap you make from this point to stating that we may be against foreign workers is breathtaking arrogance and blinkered thinking. Who promised 'British jobs for british workers' or was he lying? I think the point is that countries having economic difficulties would be ill advised to import foreign workers who take money out of the economy to send home,whilst paying the local population to not work. Economics of the madhouse.

anne allan

April 7th, 2010 3:06pm Report this comment

It's not surprising: the private sector requires staff who turn up for work, punctually and regularly. They also prefer their staff to be literate and numerate. In other words, they have to work to survive.
And then there's the public sector, aka keeping the unemployable off the streets. Remember the photos of the DSS offices in Newcastle, replete with slobs in baseball caps and tatty T-shirts? You know, the ones who managed to lose the financial details of 25 million parents and children.

Kenny Dee

April 7th, 2010 3:15pm Report this comment

"Still don’t quite see what’s so wrong about immigrants doing jobs the British-born turn down."

What are these jobs that British people turn down. This is a myth created by politicians so they can say that we need immigration.

It's not just cleaning jobs that are being taken by immigrants coming to this country. There are loads of skilled jobs being taken as well(just look at the Olympic stadium), it's not because the immigrants are any better at their job, its because they are cheaper. We have loads of unemployed skilled workers that are struggling to get work.

KB

April 7th, 2010 4:06pm Report this comment

Great work turning up these figures, Fraser, but please do us all a favour and redraw the graphs so that the y-axis origin is at 0. Starting it at an arbitrary value for dramatic effect is a typical piece of Government spin to which you should not stoop.

Chris lancashire

April 7th, 2010 4:14pm Report this comment

Richard: Nice to see you're law abiding. It's plumber by the way.

Snowman

April 7th, 2010 4:48pm Report this comment

Fraser,

It would be even better if you could get a split for the aggregate figure of foreign workers. And then check the statistic on the outflow of money into the countries that furnished the highest number of immigrants into the UK.

It’s not only that foreign born workers cut out the indigenous burghers from jobs, it’s also that the wealth is being siphoned out of the country.

Chuck Unsworth

April 7th, 2010 5:20pm Report this comment

@ Richard

So far you've claimed to be of Jewish extraction from Tel Aviv, paying for your own training in the UK. In response
I specifically asked you whether you had dual nationality or UK citizenship (and therefore were merely paying your course fees - as everyone else is obligated). You carefully avoided responding. Now, all of a sudden, it's 'our economy' So I ask again, what is your status? Perhaps we're observing an widening gulf between what you say and the reality - just like your hero Mr Brown.

However, and as others here have noted, foreign workers here do very little to increase the nation's wealth or, in some cases, health.

TGF UKIP

April 7th, 2010 6:30pm Report this comment

All very interesting and impressive Fraser, IF you were Leader of the Tory Party. Unfortunately, you're not and the limp, lame wet who is won't go near these figures lest it undermine the Mekon's completely misbegotten and fallacious "de-contamination of the brand."

Perhaps, next time round, when the Tories have got a proper Leader, your figures will get the exposure they deserve. Hopefully, that next time will be following quite soon.

JohnBUK

April 7th, 2010 6:50pm Report this comment

What would also be interesting regarding the working figures is the number of "students" now versus 1997. I suspect there are a far more students now than in 1997 (doing worthless degrees) - ie more would have been either unemployed or in the job-market doing (or not) those lower paid jobs that immigrant workers are now being employed for.

Private Schultz

April 7th, 2010 7:03pm Report this comment

Good stuff! Did I imagine it, or did Damian Green quote these stats at Broon at PMQ earlier today? If so, hope you get the credit.

Richard

April 7th, 2010 8:05pm Report this comment

@Chuck,
I hold a British Passport.
I did reply to you ..perhaps it's your age try listening a bit more.
Do you want my shoe size now? my National insurance number?
Photo copy of my marriage certificate?
Pictures of my mother and father maybe?

Nosey Ba****d

Outofwork

April 7th, 2010 11:08pm Report this comment

Oh really, have you just woken up to this ?
Welcome to the real world, Fraser.
Why don't you do some digging ?
Find out how many large British companies import Indians on tourist visas, train them, send them home and then bring them back on work permits because they have "unique skills". See if a local applicant will be employed at the same company without knowing these skills in advance.

It is wrecking the IT industry and the government does not care. This is happening on government projects and they have gone on record as saying that they are not interested in the employment policies of the companies that are running their IT.

Minnie Ovens

April 7th, 2010 11:54pm Report this comment

To the chagrin of CoffeeHousers, I'm a fan of immigration

Fine, but tell us of what part of immigration you are a fan.
If you are a fan of unlimited immigration you would be very stupid or just plain malevolent.
But you are far too intelligent for that.
In other words you are making the remark to appear PC and, it is a very silly immature remark for an editor of The Spectator (not for Brown, Balls or the Labour party generally)
You are a good columnist but grow up.

Dominic

April 8th, 2010 1:08am Report this comment

Great job Fraser.

Now can we play 'follow the money'?

2.5m workers on an average salary of £20k sending 30% of their pay back to their country of origin = £1.5 billion.

E Hart

April 8th, 2010 3:02am Report this comment

Your proposition is absurd. The government is not responsible for the recruitment policies of private companies. Furthermore, if these foreign-born workers where not eligible to work in the UK, it would illegal to employ them. As for the public sector, the same applies. If you are a EU citizen, have a visa or qualify on the points-based system (non-EEA and non-Swiss nationals), you have the right to work in the UK. Thereafter, it is a simple matter of supply and demand. Much of the immigration you refer to comes as a direct result of recruitment drives by private companies in EU member states. Are you saying that these companies shouldn't have employed these people? What are you saying? Should the government have coerced these private companies and the public sector into employing British workers in contravention of the law? The government and private sector created the jobs and many of them have been filled by EU workers. So what?

If you want to know why the private and public sector have chosen to employ foreign-born nationals, you should do a bit of research. I'm sure that among the answers, you'll find that skill, experience, knowledge, qualifications and cost will all be factors.

The nonsense gets worse: "No-one would have believed the scale of immigration, or the rapid expansion of the public sector - for these two are the only factors that have pushed the jobs total upwards." This simply isn't true. The "only factors". Look at your own graph for the period 1997-2009 and look at the number of jobs in the private sector over this period (especially between 2005-2007). Unless these people were pretending to work, they must have been employed by someone, ergo, there must have been a job for them to do. You go on: "So Brown should not talk about "creating" new jobs. 'Importing' would be a much better word." Would it? So you allow large numbers of immigrants to come into the country to do jobs that don't exist, do you? Christ, this is incoherent babble of the worst kind.

This is the most non of non-stories as the government would have been in breach of EU and British Law if it had discriminated against these workers on the basis of their country of origin. Entitlement is entitlement is entitlement. You might want to rail against EU employment law but remember it cuts both ways.

The only things you've managed to get right are that in the private sector, the main beneficiaries have been foreign-born nationals and Gordon Brown had no business saying "British jobs for British workers"; it isn't up to him.

Do your research and stop talking nonsense.

daniel maris

April 8th, 2010 3:44am Report this comment

"Immigration has broken the link between economic recovery and falling dole queues - 2.5m extra jobs does no longer means 2.5m fewer people on the dole."

You seem to assume foreign born people cannot go on the dole. Which is wrong.

I don't know why given these figures you are a "fan" of mass immigration. Presumably you and your family are well insulated from its negative effects.

I would refer you to Migration Watch UK, always a good source of sense on this topic. Firstly there is no economic benefit from permanent mass immigration (even more so if one takes into account the increased birth rate that has been produced by recent immigration) since you have to invest hugely in infrastructure to provide homes, buses, trains, hospitals and so on that new immigrants need. Secondly, there is no reason on Earth why temporary work immigration has to be tied to naturalisation and citizenship.

terence patrick hewett

April 8th, 2010 6:49am Report this comment

Compare what has been done in this country to working class communities in the last 50 years, with what was done in South Africa under the Group Areas Act; and compare the sense of loss and grief displayed by the victims at the trashing of their communities.

Great outrage was displayed in the 1960's, at the District Six removals in Capetown, South Africa. On 11 February 1966, the South African Government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been relocated to the bleak Cape Flats Township some 25 kilometres away. Everything in District Six was bulldozed except a couple of churches. The people that were removed suffered incredible cultural and identity loss and were subject to the appalling violence of the Cape Flats criminal gangs.

The working classes in this country after 1950 saw their families dispersed, their towns and close knit communities destroyed and turned into murderous, vice ridden slums infinitely worse than anything they replaced, a thing that even the Luftwaffe did not achieve. Their family oriented culture came under constant and consistent attack. The abolition of capital and corporal punishment was something they never wanted because they knew what it would mean for them. They could not control their children; the usual robust methods being made illegal. The legalisation of abortion destroyed traditional morality and family structure, a eugenic attempt to kill off the next generation; the butcher's bill since the 1967 Abortion Act stands at 6.7 million and counting. The schools which offered a way out of poverty were debauched and an anti-learning culture fostered from within them. They were called "chavs" and made to feel that their culture and love of country was inferior and even the traditional recreations of pub smoking with a drink outlawed.

The responses to both of these events were very different. The one elicited outrage; but protests against the other were regarded with incomprehension and contempt. It was as if society regarded the working classes in Britain to be of a lower order of humanity that was unable to experience emotion and loss; a brute order of humanity with a debased culture of no value. The enormity of what the liberal elites have done to British society in the name of social engineering is now beginning to sink in. We get calls to fix our broken society by the very people who broke it in the first place. Like post Apartheid South Africa, we long for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the enforcers are encouraged to admit that everything they have implemented in the name of social engineering in the last fifty years has been a giant, tragic, cruel, wicked and traumatic social experiment inspired by some very base motives. Those who do not come from these communities do not even begin to understand the depth of the contempt and anger. People justly feel betrayed and marginalised by the very organizations that should have protected them.

The society and communities in Britain that were displaced were not perfect by any means, but in comparison to the violent and dysfunctional chaos that has been brought about by the activities of the liberal elites and their enforcers, it was a heaven of tolerance. That society was no accident; it was brought about after a 100 years of social reform by the Victorians and Edwardians. And our murderous and vice ridden society is no accident either; it was brought about in 50 short years by agents of a force bent on our destruction. They have managed to achieve the almost impossible; they have dragged us back into the horrors of the 18th century. Our unwritten constitution worked very well until recently, but it afforded us no protection from an internal enemy, not based on Plato's Will to Good, but based on Nietzsche's Will to Power. And God help us, we let it happen. What has been done is wrong in Christian terms, in philosophical terms, in human terms and in terms of self interest. Normal human relations are rooted in mutual respect not in the hatreds of domination by intolerance.

michael

April 8th, 2010 9:22am Report this comment

Whilst labour stuck to Tory pledges during the first 3 years ... everyone's a winner.
After that the state was busy recruiting agency foreigners to replace locals. They were cheaper and they didn't have employment rights. (pensions, redundancy accruals, 12 months service and so on).
The two faces of Labour .... hypocrisy and ner er... hypocrisy.

skynine

April 8th, 2010 9:22am Report this comment

The problem isn't of immigrants working in the UK providing a reliable and willing workforce for British business, it is the ability of so many British people to take the easy option to opt out of employment, stay at home on benefits.

Wherever you go in London, to shops, restaurants, bars or even street sweeping there is a lack of British workers. We seem to have a huge number of people who don't appear to have even the most basis work skills (like pushing a brush).

Mind you once a single woman has a child it would be economic madness for her to look for employment as the benefits that are received are worth £35,000 gross a year.

This isn't an immigrant problem it is a British problem and must be addressed.

John Thomas

April 8th, 2010 1:20pm Report this comment

So, the old chestnut of jobs "British workers won't do" Really? Some people won't work because it's easier not to (and there's always someone there to pick up their bills; they'd work if there was no one else to pay). Others just might do the jobs if there was no one else to do them. And some jobs have the pay kept low because employers' know that many immigrants are desperate. If there were less immigrants, and less social security, it might sort the sheep from the goats, in both the areas of lazy people and cheapskate employers.

Tendryakov

April 8th, 2010 2:06pm Report this comment

I lived in the USSR for a year in the 1970's, and frequently to be seen on the walls of all public buildings was a placard saying "Those who don't work, don't eat". An excellent motto, sorry - mission statement. And there was a time when it was an unwritten axiomatic assumption, since time immemorial, that everyone had a moral obligatin to make some kind of contribution to the society in which they lived. That's when drone was an idle bee. My dad would have died of shame to do nothing and take money for it. This government, above all, has encouraged the idea that to be a parasite is acceptable, not only acceptable, but something for which you receive money. I think we're going to see things hot up over the next 25 years, as the world's population inexorably increases, and we are compelled to compete, possibly fight, for the 40% of food which we have to import, by then, probably 50%. Not to mention water. And there's the 10 new Birminghams we are going to build. Ah well, I can it is some consolation that the food riots will be concentrated in the great southern conurbation - the one that stretches from London, to Birmingham, to Bristol. I'm looking to Scotland, myself.

michael

April 8th, 2010 2:38pm Report this comment

The benefits of foreign labour... go to the poor sod who lost his job.

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April 8th, 2010 3:34pm Report this comment

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Philippe Legrain

April 8th, 2010 4:48pm Report this comment

This article is very misleading. Despite the recession, there are 1.2 million more UK citizens in work than when Labour took office, and the employment rate is stable, For a better take on immigration and jobs, read my new blog post at http://www.philippelegrain.com/why-the-express-and-spectator-are-misleading-on-immigration-and-jobs/

Walter Ellis

April 8th, 2010 5:09pm Report this comment

Why is it that people in the media who are obviously extremely concerned about the impact of large-scale immigration on the native population of the UK feel the need to add that they are "fans" of immigration? I am not a fan of immigration. I think that Britain is full and that, from now on, we should be extremely selective about those we allow to come and live in this country. Those new arrival who are legally here should be fairly treated – and encouraged to become "British". The millions out there who wish to join them should be told, thanks, but no thanks. I suspect this is your view, too, but you don't feel you can say so for fear of being labelled racist.

Langtry-girl

April 8th, 2010 5:11pm Report this comment

Okay, so first time at Spectator towers (please be gentle!) and I have two questions:1.Does 'foreign born' equate to 'not-British'--I have several friends born abroad (army kids,mostly) who were born abroad but are Brtitsh citizens.2.I spent ten years living and working in South Africa (1990-1999, since you ask) and I simply cannot comprehend the post comparing the excesses of Apartheid to the de-urbanisation of the industrial working classes in this country.Wait, actually i can comprehend it, I just think it's wrong.Wrong because, it conflates two processes that are different in every respect possible:time-scale, motivation, outcome...Yes, working-class culture has been assaulted in this country, but I would argue that the assault has intensified over the last 30 years due to the glorification of the material over everthing else.The removals in District 6 where undertaken with the sole purpose of desruction;the de-urbanisation of our working class, although, I agree, leading to some degree of breakdown were taken to improve people's live--a lesson in the perils of good intentions, perhaps.

Finally, I live on a former council esate,now, part owner occupied, part tenented, and can attest that while some of the social problems to which you allude are present, there is still a sense of community and pride.When I first moved here I was nervous, now, its home.

Langtry-girl

April 8th, 2010 5:23pm Report this comment

okay two posts in very quick sucession-must be newbie confidence!skynine:I have been a single mother on benefit, my partner having been killed by a drunk driver during my pregnancy, (now working before you all flame me!)and I can tell you with absolute confidence that your figure of £35,000 is WRONG.When I came off benefit in 2005 I was receiving £17 per week child benefit,£100 per week Income support.My rent of £89 a week was paid as was my council tax £10 per week.And that was IT!By my sums this added up to £884+£5200+£4628+£520=£11232.Okay, no tax, but stll nothing like the sums you've mentioned. We need a debate on parenting, culture of work (or not working), marginal tax on middle-earners, absolutely, but not on the basis of incorrect figures.

Be_Humble

April 8th, 2010 5:44pm Report this comment

British Jobs for British workers in the public sector. However in the private sector, Gordon cannot dictate to private British Businessmen who to employ. For the sake of their fate bonuses and to satisfy their majorshareholders, these businessmen are ready to employ foreigners because they are cheap and they dont have to pay N.I. for them (for short contracts). In fact these businessmen who some of them are endorsing Cameron shut factories in the UK to reopen them in places like China and India. It is time to expose these hypocrites that are sheading crocodile tears on N.I. Unfortunately Cameron does support them! This doesnt suprise me when it comes from an old Etonian who pretends to be one of us!

Mike

April 8th, 2010 6:03pm Report this comment

Richard seems to be one of those Labour clones that STILL believes the lies about "immigration being good for Britain". This is the biggest Liebour lie of all, as Migrationwatch has proven this to be a lie on many occasions. Since 1997, the immigration level has increased twelve-fold; ie: it's jumped from 50,000 per annum, to 600,000 pa. This is an increase of 1200%, and it was planned right from the start. This government has brought this about, with the agreement of the opposition parties, whilst 6 million British people are on benefits. These actions are nothing less than TREASON, as was the conspiracy to bankrupt the UK, which began with Brown selling our Gold Reserves in 1999, when we didn't need the money and the price of gold was at it's lowest ever rate.

By not exposing these truths, the opposition parties are as guilty as Brown, and they ALL deserve to be given whole-life prison sentences.

The British people deserve to be told the TRUTH.

Gemmoli

April 8th, 2010 6:30pm Report this comment

business leaders tell us NI rise will stop new jobs - well as the so called major employers it apperas they've only been employing immigrants in the last 10 years !
and now they threaten not employing any more if they have to pay more NI !
quick solution
so pay increased NI = stop employing (specatator) immigrants = massive contribution to the pubilc sector (where just maybe lots of ENGLISH have been employed in jobs over the last 10 years)
what a solution !

Alan Cadwallender

April 8th, 2010 7:28pm Report this comment

Brussels effectively controls Britain's immigration policy. As a consequence we will never be able to bring immigration under control until we leave the EU.

Manicbeancounter

April 8th, 2010 8:34pm Report this comment

Whilst the two figures might be the same, they are not actually the same thing. Today’s debate did not bring out the full difference.
You must remember that the unemployment is now higher than in 1997 due to the recession. Netting this out means that at an equivalent point in the cycle, there are more jobs for British workers, as well as there being jobs for the recent immigrants. The implication that many might draw – that foreign workers are taking British jobs – is therefore harder to sustain. Also to get a more balanced assessment, you would have to see the proportion of foreign workers that have returned home (e.g. the Poles in the building trades) as a result of the recession. If it is in the hundreds of thousands, the British economy benefits from their work, but does not have to fund their unemployment.
To be also be fair on Gordon Brown, the large numbers on benefits is a separate issue. In the absence of immigration, the extra jobs would not have emerged. Instead you would have had some of the boom choked off by much higher rates for trades people and cleaners. Remember the £100,000-a-year plumbers before the Poles arrived?

A much more important issue for the campaign is the contribution that Gordon Brown’s Chancellorship has made to the National Debt. The Budget forecast for the National Debt in 2014 is £1400bn. By my conservative calculations (see manicbeancounter blog), at least £600bn of this will be due to the structural deficits run up in the boom years. The contribution of the world-wide recession will be less than half that.

McSweeney

April 9th, 2010 2:27pm Report this comment

Where does this 99% come from? The stats comm file says 50-80%...

Jimmy Hicks

April 11th, 2010 10:11am Report this comment

Chuck Unsworth @ 7/4 1720hrs.
This aged East Londoner (old Canningtown) who began military training before World War II is specifically asking for your pedigree and training.

True Brit

April 11th, 2010 4:21pm Report this comment

@richard - interesting that you say you hold a British passport rather than saying that you're British. That's one of the big problems we have in our country, people who are happy to hold the passport but who don't want to behave as a Brit. A lot of the foreign workers who come to this country do get the passport, but don't feel or behave as if they were British and our society suffers as a result.... still, mustn't complain....

E Hart

April 11th, 2010 9:40pm Report this comment

@True Brit

How does one "behave like a Brit"? Do tell and while you're at it why don't you tell rest of the class how a true Brit should be?

I have no idea why The Spectator doesn't monitor its comment page for arrant nonsense.

Also, to all those who talk about being "English" - you should think again. There is no such thing as being "English". English is a language not a national identity - that's where British comes in.

The "English" or more correctly, the British, are an amalgam of Celts, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, Vikings, Normans (other Vikings), the Belgae (from Belgium and Flandre, Scots, Welsh plus all the various peoples who came to Roman Britain from Hispania, Dacia, Illyricum, Raetia, Gaul, Numidia, Tripolitania, Scythia bla, bla, effing bla... zzz

England is a corruption of Angleland and as the Angles only comprise a small number of people,who settled largely in the South East and East Anglia, they are just one of the sum that comprise the national identity known collectively as "British".

Before Alfred the Great there was not such thing or political entity as England. After he defeated the Danes at the Battle of Eddington, the various Viking, Danish, Saxon, Angle and Jutish kingdom coalesced to become something called Angleland - a hotch-potch of the above. Then after the death of Edward the Confessor and the accession of Harold Hardrada (a Viking) - the Normans came on the scene adding another infusion of Viking blood.

All this nationalist claptrap is so effing tedious!

Robert Taggart

April 12th, 2010 10:33am Report this comment

As a state sponsored scrounger some may think us angry at this state of affairs. Non, nein, nyet ! As long as these foreign workers are paying British taxes they are paying for our benefits which allow us to indulge in a more relaxed lifestyle which allows us to post blogs on various websites at a time when all too many other folk of working age are working their butts off !
Difficulties only arise when governments attempt to force us into the work force ! Leave us alone !

Danny

April 23rd, 2010 10:57am Report this comment

If liek above they pnly see British as being white skinned then we are going to have a problem because i am british born from indian parents who have worked hard all their lives and put the five of us through school and university and now all pay 40% tax rate, thats 2 days every week is going to fund lazy white brits who feel that regardless of support given to this country that a white face is more superior! well lame fuckers get ready for a fight for this country becasue like sir winston churchill before me i wont let the nazi win! Remember Mark Collett has called Churchill a "Cunt" in BNP speeches and you ignorant and lazy spoilt little brats cant understand an educated argument without resorting to racism!

Danny

April 23rd, 2010 11:04am Report this comment

Absolute bull, ther are plenty of Jobs lazy benefit brits wont do and that is not the real poblem its the attitude and aggressive nature of many white brits, they wont take orders, they wont put in the extra hours and they will be hungover every monday tuesday! they are not efficient and take no pride in their job or the country, the only time they take pride in the country is when they are kicking immigrants in the head while drunk in spain! Im not scared of being robbed or attacked by immigrants on a weekend in town it is the drunken british yob using his benefit money to get drunk on! i say more migrants to pull us out of the benfit driven pit, actually if it came to removing all benefits the migrants would still cope the white brit will turn on their neighbours and turn to stealing rather than work harder!

Bouchard

May 1st, 2010 3:20am Report this comment

To Mr. E. harts comment

That makes you then a person with no country, no national identity, in effect a non person

What you say is stupid; just about every country in Europe and indeed the whole world is made up in this way.
The Germans were not all one tribe Saxons and jutes and hinterlanders and many smaller groups made up their nation in addition they didn’t even become a nation until bismarks 1st Reich.
The Celts were gauls originally and most came from France ( strange how you seem to have left them out assuming no doubt that they are all in Scotland and Wales.
The French are made up of Celts, Flemish and Franks and Norman Vikings ( not all of them came here in 1066)
You don’t see the French or Germans banging on that they don’t really exist as a people or a nation.
In fact because England was an Island of tribes ( such as all the others in Europe) its unification into a common people called the English was swifter here than any other European country, invaders and newcomers which largely ended in 1066 added little effect on the national character and were absorbed rather than changed the demography otherwise England would have fractured into a series of small states such as happened in Germany, Russia, the Balkans and Italy.
Being English is loving bangers and mash, Yorkshire pudd, English pubs, our common law , magna carta, parliamentary democracy, our cockney , Devon Cornish, northern accents, our industrial revolution our empire and history our inventions and so on too numerous to mention here , in fact there has never been a people and culture that has given so much to the world and has spread its identity so widely.

You are a FOOL sir and a politically correct leftist one worlder who if you had your way no nation would exist except perhaps for any small minority that just happens to land on these shores from the third world, but try telling the Arabs they don’t exist as they are made up of thousands of tribes and didn’t even have any nations before the English created them

Bouchard

May 1st, 2010 3:28am Report this comment

To Mr. E. harts comment

That makes you then a person with no country, no national identity, in effect a non person

What you say is stupid; just about every country in Europe and indeed the whole world is made up in this way.
The Germans were not all one tribe Saxons and jutes and hinterlanders and many smaller groups made up their nation in addition they didn’t even become a nation until bismarks 1st Reich.
The Celts were gauls originally and most came from France ( strange how you seem to have left them out assuming no doubt that they are all in Scotland and Wales.
The French are made up of Celts, Flemish and Franks and Norman Vikings ( not all of them came here in 1066)
You don’t see the French or Germans banging on that they don’t really exist as a people or a nation.
In fact because England was an Island of tribes ( such as all the others in Europe) its unification into a common people called the English was swifter here than any other European country, invaders and newcomers which largely ended in 1066 added little effect on the national character and were absorbed rather than changed the demography otherwise England would have fractured into a series of small states such as happened in Germany, Russia, the Balkans and Italy.
Being English is loving bangers and mash, Yorkshire pudd, English pubs, our common law , magna carta, parliamentary democracy, our cockney , Devon Cornish, northern accents, our industrial revolution our empire and history our inventions and so on too numerous to mention here , in fact there has never been a people and culture that has given so much to the world and has spread its identity so widely.

You are a FOOL sir and a politically correct leftist one worlder who if you had your way no nation would exist except perhaps for any small minority that just happens to land on these shores from the third world, but try telling the Arabs they don’t exist as they are made up of thousands of tribes and didn’t even have any nations before the English created them.

Johny Jacob

May 11th, 2010 8:56pm Report this comment

Our patriotism is only in words as we have one of the laziest and dumb populations amongst any modern economy. People not bothered to study or work and feeding on immigrants sweat and then blame them for coming here and taking jobs away. Private sector is recruiting smarter workers because the local population doesn’t have enough skills for certain jobs and too lazy to do labour jobs. Even NHS has imported thousands from all over the world so that we could survive and stop winching about service. Its time we wake up as we are too busy claiming benefits and getting drunk then complaining that the bar man is not British.

dee

February 25th, 2011 10:38pm Report this comment

I wish people would be not be so biased against British south africans applying for jobs as yes, I am of english decent but I am born in South africa, my parents are english yet happened to live in South Africa as residents for an almighty 28 yrs and I have been here for 8 years. Why is there a problem when south africans (british) get a job whom have pure english blood, what are the prejudices about south africans coming here to take jobs when it is clear that they have heritage here. Stop the ignorance, stop the prejudice.

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