Right to reply: Why do so many "new jobs" go to foreigners?

Dennis Churchill

80% of immigrants are from outside the EU. (Sunday Telegraph)That can be dealt with—but won’t as our political class do not deal with problems just talk about them.

Rhoda Klapp

So much wrong in this, but it is so long one is hard pushed to summarise one's position and fit all the objections into the comment box. I must be succinct if not as patient as usual. Bollocks.

ButcombeMan

"But it’s even more important to avoid blaming immigration for our problems given that much of the low-skill immigration we are now experiencing is from the Eastern EU"
***********************
It is not ALL "low skill immigration". I make a personal habit of talking to immigrant, especially eastern european labour when ever I can. Partly because I have worked in eastern europe several times and have an interest in the region.

I find a consistent pattern of well educated people initially doing "low skill jobs" to get into our labour market, with some in my experience, moving on to better things. This is a very differrent thing.

As for jobs not being where the economically inactive live. What silliness. Our population need to "get on their bikes" like the eastern europeans. The world is not going to provide a living for them on their doorstep and it is wrong to feed that mindset and excuse.

2trueblue

In short foreigners work for less and they WORK. The conditions here are better than in their home country, they have free health care and a system that works for them.

It is facile to say that the wages are too low as an excuse for our people not to work, the benefits are too high to make it worth their while. There is also the complicated system that does not assist those wanting to work to make that transition back to work without losing all hteir benefits and falling into debt straight away.

Chris lancashire

Chris Mullins reveals in his latest diaries that back in 1994 it was noted that the difference between a low waged job and benefits was too small - "for every pound they earn, they lose a pound in benefits".
Since then - absolutely no change.
The difference between working and living on benefits needs to be larger. A socialist would argue for higher wages, others for lower benefits - maybe both?

Heartless, Hard, Romantic Perry

Let's cut right through all this to the heart of the matter:

Q.

a. Can the person do the job?
b. Does the person want to do the job?

A. With relatively few exceptions, probably not if they are British state school 'educated' and / or infected by the 'British' Disease.

Boudicca

"Since none of the major political parties advocate leaving the EU, there is little point in railing against this supply of low-skill immigration. Instead, we should focus on policies to accelerate our return to growth and our path to a full employment economy"
---------------

So your conclusion to the slow-motion coup of our country by the EU is to accept that because the 3 main parties want us in the EU we must just accept that and stop worrying our little heads about it - it the State knows best.

This is a democracy (of a sort, anyway). If you don't agree with a joint policy advanced by the main 3 parties, you support another that offers the alternative which you DO want - in this case UKIP.

I am happy to allow Eastern Europeans to come here to work, providing WE control OUR borders and WE decide how many WE let in.

Matt Cavanagh

Dennis Churchill: that's not correct. If you measure it as a percentage of total immigration, immigration from the EU is just under 30%; as a percentage of non-British immigration (the more pertinent statistic in my view), it's 35%. And as a proportion of low-skill economic migration - the particular focus of my article and Fraser's original article - it's higher still.

(These figures are taken from the IPS figures published by the ONS, for the 12 months to Dec 2010 - generally a more reliable source than the Sunday Telegraph.)

Ian Walker

Why is "full employment" deemed to be 80%? That seems a bit arbitrary.

Surely "full employment" means that no fit adult of working age is either unemployed for more than a few months, or able to live without the aid of the welfare state.

The best measure would be "benefit payments to fit working-age adults" - surely a noble goal would be to reduce this to zero

Arthur

The problem is our levels of welfare are too high, and we are too accommodating to people who aren't prepared to undergo some inconvenience to get a job. If you don't have to work to maintain a standard of living you're happy with, why would you?

As an example, near where I live the horseracing industry is importing large numbers of Pakistanis to work in the stables. The owners won't pay British people enough to get them off the dole, and won't offer enough training, because it's cheaper for them to bring men and their families halfway round the world. The same thing is true in the fruit and veg industries.

If it makes economic sense for people to travel halfway round the world to pick cabbages or shovel horse-s***, how can it be unreasonable to expect locals to move from one county to another?

Dennis Churchill

The first thing would be to restrict the 80% of immigrants from outside the EU to those with a work permit. This would only be supplied when the company employing the foreign worker arranged Health insurance and it would be conditional on not being eligible for welfare benefits for the duration of the permit—say 2 years.
The right to reside following marriage to a British citizen should also be conditional on no extra burden being put on state funding and no indefinite leave permitted.
All cases where British judges refuse to deport foreign criminals should be referred to the European court to see that there is consistency throughout the EU.
Basically if our political class want open borders and don’t agree with the concept of nationality they should come out and say it.
Wages would increase due to supply and demand. This would create an incentive for those on welfare to seek employment. A more rigorous monitoring of fraud and freezing benefits would also help.

Scary Biscuits

Blair went on for his whole term of office advocating the 'economic benefits of immigration'. We didn't believe him then and we don't now when people like Cavanagh reheat the argument.

It is not the statistic on 90% of new jobs going to immigrants that is misleading. (Cavanagh's straw man of saying that people think that means 90% of all jobs is a classic intellectual trick, a straw man.) The statistic that *is* misleading is that these immigrants are creating growth. They are but at the cost of GDP per person, meaning that on average we're getting poorer as a result of immigration.

Cavanagh says that without immigration the jobs that they have filled would likely have not been created at all. This is also true but if the associated 'growth' is illusiory then it is better not to have it and accept the reality that as a result of the re-establishment of the post-war economic consensus (rudely interrupted by Thatcher and early Blair) Britain isn't growing and far from our debts becomming more repayable because of growth, they will become more unpayable because of higher welfare payments and lower income per person.

The other factor pro-immigration people forget is the effect on the countries these people come from. Large areas of Eastern Europe have been denuded of their best and brightest, their economic woes compounded by massive emmigration. African countries have spent money on training nurses only to see the poached by the NHS. Their problems become our problems as we have to give them aid to compensate.

Everyone loses from immigration, just ask the Romans.

Archibald

Excellent stuff - not the content per se, but the idea. Very good, we need more proper debate like this and the Speccy should be commended.

However, will you be giving anyone from the EDL a right to reply? I wouldn't think so, as given all that you've told us about them in pursuit of exposing their extremist views to the sunlight and watching them perish, their right to reply would most likely be but four words long: "We are not heinous". There is precious little else to reply too.

Come now Speccy, I don't understand why you can have this sort of excellent open debate but when it's something as serious as the EDL and other extremists all you have is abuse and the apparent lie that you wish to expose their views for what they are. I don't want someone from the EDL on here but surely you will stand by your own convictions and take them to task properly?

I deserve an answer.

Thank you.

Paul Perrin

Your logic is bogus.

You say "we know unemployment/inactivity arent'falling" and say that proves that migration isn't the problem -- but the original question is 'is unemployment/inactivity not falling while jobs are being created *CAUSED* by migration'.

With such a basic flaw in your reasoning, I am surprised your piece got published at all.

EyeSee

I'm lost (it is a particularly boring article though). It seems that their is absolutely nothing wrong with open borders and immigrants aren't taking all the jobs. Just millions of them arriving and quite a percentage of those getting jobs, that apparently wouldn't have existed or would have gone unfilled if we had border controls. Either lots of people arriving are taking jobs nationals would otherwise have done or they are not. If not then we are into reversing colours methinks,black is white.

Dennis Churchill

Scary Biscuits
August 31st, 2011 10:48am
Yes it is per capita we should concentrate on.
A country’s Quality of Life is not normally considered as the affordability of domestic help.

Catesby

why don't we confront the deeper problem that too many British firms are stuck in low-skill, low-value business models,

But if the problem is that our homegrown unemployables are too thick and too tattooed to get a job at Starbucks, how on earth will offering them high value posts in the knowledge economy help?

Also, off you go calling for more "support". We have spent gazillions on "support".... JobCentre Plus, Connexions, this scheme and that New Deal. Fat lot of good "support" does.

The Poles don't need "support". They just turn up on time, hair brushed in clean kit.

Catesby

@Dennis Churchill

A countryâ™s Quality of Life is not normally considered as the affordability of domestic help.

More's the pity. The services of a decent valet would greatly enhance my happiness index.

Dennis Churchill

Catesby
August 31st, 2011 11:05am
We really need to stop equating immigrants with Poles/Latvians.80% are from outside the EU.
As for attitude, more teachers who have experience outside teaching so that children can get a sense of what will be expected of them in the workplace would help. Also more male teachers. Education has become too feminized; hence the poor test results for boys.

Publius

As always, commenters are put at an instant disadvantage. Tiny, inconvenient comment boxes (even by blog standards) mean it is not possible to counter these tracts written by the New Establishment.

The inadequacy of the point I quote below is perhaps sufficient to highlight the overall inadequacy of this piece.

“But it’s even more important to avoid blaming immigration for our problems given that much of the low-skill immigration we are now experiencing is from the Eastern EU. Since none of the major political parties advocate leaving the EU, there is little point in railing against this supply of low-skill immigration.”

I would also like to hear why it is not, then, a good idea merely to have completely open borders.

Otherwise, I agree with what Rhoda says.

Derek Pasquill

The ruling classes are too afraid to discuss this issue or any other which touches upon their hard fought for and won dhimmitude.

In fact they would rather expire than admit that they do not get it, that they have no idea what to do and that their pretence of governance is the Emperor's No clothes Writ Large.

Enjoy your dhimmitude and create some 'new' jobs for non-migrant workers? You're having a laugh!

wrinkled weasel

"British firms are stuck in low-skill, low-value business models, employing millions of people on chronically low wages? "

Hit the nail on the head here. Nail hitting by the way is a skill. I have long argued for the re-introduction of bound apprenticeships.

I digress.

There was a story in the papers recently about a bloke who does direct selling and runs a call-centre. He was moaning that he only had two applications for 20 jobs.

If you have bee unfortunate enough to work in one of these gaffs you will know that the above quote is true. Furthermore, the job is demeaning, de-skilling and it goes nowhere. The only people who make money doing this are bastards, so if you want to raise a nation of bastards, this is the way to go.

Otherwise, why not tap in to the mindset of the indigenous population and attempt to build a business model which plays to our strengths and not our weaknesses?

We built Concord for goodness sake, and The Titanic. (Alright, not a great example, but at the moment we are not even getting contracts for heavily subsidized infrastructure projects.)

Britain is being reduced to a sweat shop. Even a moderately skilled computer buff in Bangalore has a better standard of living than the low paid Brit, and frankly, my experience is that many of these out-sourced services are better than the moaning can't be arsed people you get in British call centres.

Derek

wrinkled weasel@ 11.24am

There was nothing wrong with the Titanic as long as the Captain didn't steer it full speed ahead into an iceberg.

The same is true of England under the current political class.

denis cooper

Basically this article is just another load of rather tortuous, and tenuous, special pleading in favour of allowing and encouraging mass immigration into our national homeland, from somebody who probably started out by believing that the government should allow and encourage mass immigration into our national homeland for his own perverted, anti-patriotic ideological reasons, whether or not we wanted it, and who has no care even for the practical consequences of that anti-democratic, profoundly wicked policy.

Nicholas

“We’d just have . . . a duller country.”

I hope the author of that crass comment lives long enough to experience a rapacious and ruthless alien invasion from outer space. That should brighten up this dull country even more. Think how vibrant, diverse and interesting that might be - although probably not for long. And I suspect we might be providing the exotic food rather than enjoying it.

Dennis Churchill

wrinkled weasel
August 31st, 2011 11:24am
Considering how little difference there is between the disposable income of someone working in a British call centre and the same person on welfare, and the odd job in the Black Economy, I am amazed anyone works in them at all, let alone their seeming lack of motivation and customer care. The calls are all monitored so the staff turnover must be high.
Maybe we need to question a culture that assumes a courier should earn less than a Diversity coordinator or that social workers whose negligence leads to death get an Oral Warning but a Gas fitter gets charged with corporate manslaughter.
We don’t value manual work and over value white collar work. When we can’t fill these despised blue collar jobs for less than we pay people not to work we import labour from poorer countries whose children don’t want to work so we import more foreign workers…add more than a bit of Anglophobia “Brits bad, foreigners good” and you can see where Andrew Neather was coming from.

disenfranchised

@ButcombeMan....

"moving on to better things"?
so what's that then, labourer to plasterer, perhaps?
blue sky thinking, old chap. tres, tres dangereuse.....

wrinkled weasel

Dennis

"We don’t value manual work and over value white collar work."

Too right. People think it is beneath them and yet certain manual semi-skilled jobs are a darn site more rewarding than staring at a monitor.

We have become a nation of double glazing salesmen.

normanc

Honestly, I found there's no real meat to this article.

The 'a lot of people who are already in a job change jobs' is a strawman and I don't really know why it is being brought up.

The rest of the article just stakes out the left vs right position, with the left saying 'we need government to intervene more, what's needed in deprived areas is more government, more cash, more bureaucracy' and saying that the rights solution that what we need is less government, less regulation, less taxes isn't the answer.

As for low skill businesses, if it were possible to have only high skill, high wage, profitable businesses don't you think entrepeneurs left and right would be opening such businesses? Which asks more questions than it answers. And what is wrong with low skill firms anyway, what else would people who don't have the skills to do any other job do? Maybe all the new high skill businesses could pay more tax so they could get more benefits and we could abandon them along with the other 7 million on the benefit scrapheap?

Thank goodness the right isn't so quick to write people off but try and help everyone.

Archibald

Incidentally, Matt's drawing attention to the Mail and the Sun giving the impression that there is no hope along with the Neather quote I used yesterday in the "In case you missed them" blog, whichever way you chose to interpret statistics or denigrate the lower classes, whether you are coming from the right or left, there can be no doubt that it must be fairly easy to form an opinion in their circumstances that they have no hope and noone is listening to them, making the more open to extremists or good old-fashioned civil unrest. So what do we do? Do we on the left, attack them as racist, fascist and beneath contempt ("fascist au pair, anyone?") and blame it all on cuts that in many cases haven't happened yet, or on the right deal with them as work-shy benefit cheats? Or do we have a proper discussion around education etc to try to give these people genuine hope and the skills to succeed in the modern labour market? I guess it's so much easier just to denounce them as scum, right, as they won't vote anyway, will they? Let's just do that, shall we? Now, I'm off to buy a coffee from the lovely Polish girl who works in my local Café. Two sugars today, I think.

alexsandr

wrinkled weasel
Britain is being reduced to a sweatshop.

thats cos no-one wants to get their hands dirty in factories or engineering. they want soft jobs. Because we have taken woodwork, metalwork etc out the curriculum so kids can design something but dont have the basic skills to do anything useful
I did woodwork and did stuff like tenon joints etc, then metal work and did forging, thread cutting and used laithes -stuff like that. real skills.
dont spose that is allowed today cos of elf and safety.

graham

Where I disagree is that we have nearly 3 million people umemployed & over 4 million on benefits, many of whom could & should be working. The fact is they don't need to work!

The growth of immigrant workers will be a continuing problem until immigration is restricted & the benifits system is really overhauled.

We must use all the assets of this country & that means getting the idle & disenfranchised in to work!

Marcher Baron

I always mistrust any article that contains the phrase "[t]he first thing to say is that this is a bad way to phrase it" because it means the language is going to be manipulated and you can forget plain speaking on the nub of the matter. There is no disputing that welfare payments are too generous and the standard of education is too low. Both need to be fixed, along with the sense of entitlement that the State owes everybody a living. Arthur is absolutely right about the number of foreign lads in racing. Thirty years ago, the sikh who looked after one of my horses was an exception, now just about every other stable lad seems to have come from Asia (and that is not just in the Godolphin outfit).

wrinkled weasel

Woodwork and metalwork was fun but I was crap at it. I do remember getting a clip round the ear for damaging some equipment. Strangely I am not traumatised by it.

My biggest loss, that does traumatise me, is that only the thick kids were allowed to do gardening and look after the pigs and chickens. They were destined to first go on to land work and nowadays they sit at home on benefits and let the Latvians do it.

I used to sit in maths classes, staring out of the window, watching the "thickos" dig the garden, wishing I was with them.

Has anything changed? Or are we all destined to be clones?

Doppelganger

Basic economics suggests immigration shifts the supply curve for labour to the right thus reducing wage rates across the board to the benefit of employers.

Dennis Churchill

alexsandr
August 31st, 2011 12:11pm
No manual skills taught in our school? As I wrote above it is part of the feminisation of education. Encourage carpenters, sheet metal workers, cooks, tailors etc to teach in schools but by-pass the teaching colleges and their cultural Marxist indoctrination.

Dennis Churchill

Matt Cavanagh
August 31st, 2011 10:28am
Sorry I missed your post above.
So you are saying that approx 60% are from outside the EU? Even a 30% reduction would be a vast improvement on the present situation.

Gary

Firstly, the majority of unemployed and underemployed UK nationals were in work or study a few years and are not the feckless, unskilled and unemployable.

Secondly, employers do prefer getting better educated, harding working non-British nationals for lower wages.

Thirdly, we have some companies in the UK with thousands of employees which have non UK nationals in the majority. It is their competitive advantage. Usually they are "temporary" migrants who intend to return to their home country after making some money in the UK, so their expectations are lower (e.g. on housing and living conditions).

Fourthly, millions of jobs are created and destroyed in the UK every year. The net increases in employment do seem to be matched by the net increases in immigration. In some cases immigration may be good for UK nationals and some cases it may be bad, but overall it is negligible. However those that most gain tend to be already better off.

Doppelganger

Where I live the evidence does not seem to support the often stated view that British born workers are unwilling to take jobs that some deem to be unpleasant and/or undesirable. And it should go without saying that such jobs would be more attractive were, for whatever reason, real wages higher.

Dennis Churchill

Doppelganger
August 31st, 2011 12:30pm
And in a welfare state the tax payer subsidises both the wages (health care, housing benefit, education of children etc) and the payments to displaced workers. The vast majority of immigrants are net beneficiaries of the tax system not contributors.
Think of the Somali in a North West London house or the tens of thousands of unemployed Bangladeshis in the vast council estates of East London, paid by us tax payers, as immigrants rather than the Polish girl serving Archibald his coffee.

Jack of all Trades

Over the last few years, following the loss of my permament job, I have worked in quite a few (mostly ghastly) places, all on a temporary contract, and mostly poorly paid. The two invariable conclusions that I end up with are; firstly how badly staff are treated these days by managers and supervisors. Secondly although male Polish workers do get on and do the job, their female counterparts are, on the other hand both lazy and sullen. I know this is anecdotal 'evidence' but, as I say, I have found it be consistent. I remember one male colleague saying of a group of Polish women; ' If you're prepared to work, then they're prepared to talk' . Odd really.

denis cooper

Of course the Polish girl is an immigrant, if she stays here for more than a very limited period, just as much as the Somali who came here direct and the other Somali who found his way here through another EU member state.

ButcombeMan

disenfranchised
August 31st, 2011 11:52am

@ButcombeMan....

"moving on to better things"?
so what's that then, labourer to plasterer, perhaps?
blue sky thinking, old chap. tres, tres dangereuse.....
*******************
No, the classic example in my recent experience was a 40 plus year old graduate teacher of english from Poland, who came here and worked as a pub waitress before starting her own business (recruiting and vetting skilled Polish labour for UK businesses).

Another was a graduate Lithuanian mechanical engineer with good English and German, working as a cab driver while looking for something better.

Many of our eastern european workers have a keenness to work hard and improve themselves that is lacking in our underclass. We need to understand why.

Matt Cavanagh is utterly silly when he talks about jobs not being near where people live, people like him are part of the problem, they create the model and way of thinking that it is OK to be unemployed because there is no work locally.

People have always moved for work-until recently that is, then the socialist nanny state took away their responsibility to provide for themselves and their family and gave them an excuse to stay put, in places where there never will be work. Tebbitt was right, he often is.

Ruby Duck

Dennis Churchill: "we need to question a culture that assumes a courier should earn less than a Diversity coordinator or that social workers whose negligence leads to death get an Oral Warning but a Gas fitter gets charged with corporate manslaughter.
We don’t value manual work and over value white collar work."

Most white collar work isn't work, it's largely status games, grift, and hot air.

Manual work requires experience, dexterity, knowledge of tools, materials, regulations, and more. Even the production line requires consistency, timing, common sense (things we might term 'professionalism' when dressed in a suit).

The problem for the gas fitter is that his product is tangible and testable, while the metaphysical nature of the social worker product is such that it has to be coated with bullshit before it can be evaluated at all.

misleading news

Where do these numbers come from?
Ofice of National Statistics realised "Labour market statistical bulletin: August 2011", and it says:
The number of UK nationals in employment was 26.57 million in the three months to June 2011, up 71,000 on a year earlier. The number of non-UK nationals in employment was 2.58 million, up 166,000 from a year earlier.
So it is rather 70%...

Doppelganger

On the subject of JSA (and IMO the often unfair characterisation of much of the British workforce), it seems on its own such a small sum, I doubt it provides much of an incentive not to work.

London Calling

Right to reply: Why do so many "new jobs" go to foreigners?...

The Elephant is not only in the room and blowing large bubbles, its now tap dancing..
..:0

Debate?..what debate?...oh that one...the truth?...The Elephant is now waving a banner and it says 'You Cant handle the Truth ...Let alone resolve it'...;)

out of work

Husband unemployed, 25 years experience as chef, applied for about 100 jobs, interviews, told is overqualified, too old. He put flyers round businesses - windowcleaning etc, we tried starting a business - businesslink has been cut, no help from Job centre, we spent our last £150 savings on flyers, ads and website to set up business - ppl say our business idea good but no customers, no sales, we want to move house to another part of country - we can't move our mortgage cos we are unemployed, I want to train as a ESOL teacher but can't afford £1000 tuition and govt won't pay cos my husband claims jsa for me .... so don't talk about get on your bike, don't talk about get off your sofa, at the end of the day there is not enough jobs. There is enough wealth in this country to pay ppl to do the jobs that need doing. There is enough talent in this country to make it grow. But this greedy imbecile government and power base wants to hang on to its money and wants you to blame ppl like me.

Dennis Churchill

denis cooper
August 31st, 2011 1:26pm
Yes the Polish Barista is an immigrant, but she costs us less than the Somalis and Bangladeshi immigrants I gave as examples.
The Coffee Shop owner benefits because taxpayers pick various costs.
Money sent back by immigrants receiving transfer payments has also become a significant figure. Maybe it should be added to our Foreign Aid budget totals.

Peter From Maidstone

Surely Matt Cavanagh and the Spectator have the same viewpoint. So how is this some sort of a debate. We know that all the Spectator staff believe that immigration is always a blessing. So how is Matt Cavanagh's view any different.

If you really wanted a debate you would ask one of many regular commentators to respond to your blogs, or would ask a properly conservative blogger to do so.

Rebecca Smith

I am seriously tired of hearing people say British people won't work all these jobs. Or oh probably not, they're infected with the 'British Disease'. Excuse me but aren't the people making these comments British? And how would you know what hundreds of thousands of people from all across the country would or would not do? Have you traveled extensively to ask these questions to unemployed Brits? Have you taken a mass poll? Your opinions therefore are no more valid than people who randomly accuse immigrants, or immigrants who randomly accuse whites.

I am from the United States, 47 yrs old. Started working at age 16. Once I began to work, I never even had a 2 weeks at once vacation in my entire life. Some years, none at all. We have holidays, etc. Not really the same is it? Well that's how it is in the United States. 40 hours per week, 5 holidays (not guaranteed) If you work as a waiter at a restaurant you get paid 2£ an hour and ALL your income comes from tips. If you take off work, you do not receive any paid vacation, paid sick time, or paid holidays.

Unemployment in the United States is now averaging 9.5 to 15% across the country, and has been for a few years now.
In the State of Georgia, which has 10% unemployment, a full 7% of all jobs are worked by ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Not legal ones mind you. How can the government say, with a straight face, that with 10% unemployment and 7% jobs to illegals, that having illegal aliens work jobs does not effect the work market.

These are good paying construction jobs, factory jobs, blue collar. The work as cooks in restaurants, in hospitals, taxi drivers.
They are not out picking berries.

Are you anti+british bigots telling me that British people don't work carpentry or construction? That they won't work in a restaurant or a factory? Those factory jobs pay good money. At least they USED to until they found out they could pay half the amount to an immigrant and even less to an illegal.

That is government helping big business earn more profits at YOUR expense. WAKE UP PEOPLE. What good does MASS immigration do for YOU? How many have never and will never work? What about the crime?

If specific industries are lacking the immigration people should allow just enough to help, not hundreds of thousands every year piled on more and more until the entire system and way of life collapses, and that is what is happening everywhere.

WELL not everywhere, just Canada, USA, and Europe. Most African or Asian countries don't allow US to go there and start our own business, do they now?

Dennis Churchill

Peter From Maidstone
August 31st, 2011 5:14pm
Immigration, unless it is to record your support for it, is a dangerous area for journalists. Their union Guidelines are very clear.
This issue is a bit like the old Soviet’s views on Marx: it is best to lavish praise than be recorded as against.

David Lindsay

A couple of weeks ago, the Mail on Sunday hit the nail on the head: jobs go to the better-educated people from Eastern Europe, "where the Sixties never happened". And not only the Sixties, but also and inseparably the Eighties.

The decadent social libertinism of the 1960s did in fact set the scene for the extension of the same principles into the economic sphere, and thus their entrenchment by, in, through and as the decadent economic libertinism of the 1980s. Here in Britain, the same Oliver Smedley who bankrolled the union-busting, drugs-and-promiscuity-promoting criminality that was pirate radio, went on to bankroll the proto-Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs. You cannot believe in the "free" market unless you believe in unregulated drinking and gambling, and in legal access to drugs, prostitution and pornography. Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Foundation is a major financial backer of efforts to retain abortion on demand up to and including partial birth in the United States, and it funds "Catholics for a Free Choice", as that organisation’s own accounts make clear. More than shades of Alfred C Kinsey’s funding by organised vice.

Whereas Russia is now emerging from the gangster capitalism that has followed Communism. She once again recognises herself as pre-eminent among the Slavs in their mission as the age-old gatekeepers of our Biblical-Classical civilisation, whether against Islam, against Far Eastern domination, or now also against the godless, rootless, stupefied, promiscuous, usury-based, metrosexual, war-hungry pseudo-West that holds up Israel, Georgia and Taiwan as supposedly plucky and inspiring outposts.

Attempts to drag Russia into the pseudo-West were not only always doomed, although guaranteed to cause immense pain in being proved so, but they also failed to take account of the seeds of hope even within the Soviet system as such, notably the strong patriotism, and the very traditional system of education, in which teachers who were universally assumed to know more than their pupils stood in front of orderly rows of uniformed young charges and simply imparted their knowledge, with the result that, once the veneer of Marxist vocabulary was stripped away, that system’s products were often significantly better-educated than many of their Western contemporaries.

And just as pre-Communist Russia always remained the country’s true character, so very pre-Communist China remains the country’s true character. That character reveres tradition and ritual, upholds government by moral rather than physical force, affirms the Golden Rule, is Agrarian and Distributist, and has barely started an external war since China became China five thousand years ago. It is especially open to completion by, in, through and as classical Christianity. China has already moved from Maoism to the equal repressiveness of unbridled capitalism. The reassertion of her own culture is to be encouraged by every means of "soft" (in reality, truly hard) power, and the same is true of the wider Confucian world. But economic, or any other, dependence on a foreign power remains totally unacceptable.

The Friedman-courting, not to say race-baiting, Carter Administration, whence came Madeleine Albright and the late Richard Holbrooke, was particularly bad for abusing the noble cause of anti-Communism by emphasising Soviet human rights abuses while ignoring Chinese and Romanian ones. It even happily allowed the Chinese-backed Pol Pot to retain control of the Cambodian seat at the UN after Phnom Penh had fallen to the rival forces backed by Vietnam and therefore by the Soviet Union. Similar paw prints were also evident on Margaret Thatcher’s holding out for the Chinese-backed Robert Mugabe, for whom she arranged a knighthood, as if he would have been any better than the Soviet-backed Joshua Nkomo.

Margaret Thatcher, who as Education Secretary closed so many grammar schools that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled, and who as Prime Minister replaced O-levels with GCSEs. There was certainly no fine art in her railway stations.

Awake!

well, whatever the history is, the fact is that loads of people chose not too work in the UK because they don't need to.
The Left needs to work out what it stands for, but so does the Right- and that means telling it as it is.

Dennis Churchill

Awake!
August 31st, 2011 9:41pm
Not as long as politics is so heavily influenced by marketing. You tell people what they want to hear so they buy (vote) for your brand (party)
This is the inevitable result of having a political class who view politics as a career. Add to that indoctrination with fashionable political views about the role of the state and the concept of nationality and there is no chance of real change while the present generation hold power.

Dennis Churchill

Such enrichment.
From the Express:
“ONE in three offenders locked up in Britain’s biggest youth jail last year was foreign-born.
Somalis are the largest group, followed by Romanians and Jamaicans, which make up more than 600 of the 2,000 inmates at Feltham Young Offenders Institute in west London.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of campaign group MigrationWatch, said: “Clearly the efforts made to integrate these people from immigrant communities have failed.”

tired

Could we please not talk about getting mothers back to work in the same breath as the long term unemployed? I work 90 hour weeks looking after my preschoolers, and don't cost the tax payer a penny...why would it be better if the state payed someone else to do the same work instead while I did a job I enjoyed less? Mothers with kids at home should at least be considered as, and get to think of themselves as, employed, even if no one is prepared to pay them anything!

John-

The native British can't possibly compete with Eastern Europeans etc. because they are taught by teachers who can't spell, know no grammar, can't do elementary maths, and know no history, geography or scripture, They are therefore virtually illiterate and innumerate and cannot compete with people who do have the basic skills required in a civilised society. "The jobs no one wants to do", which are a favorite reason for filling the country with Pakistanis, Africans and Carribeans, could presumably be done by such people and, were the unemployment benefit to be witheld from them upon refusing to do such work, then they may suddenly find themselves able to perform these tasks. We also have prisons bursting with prisoners who do nothing productive all day long, and the armed services, on whom to call in time of need for such work to be done. It is doubtful that many of the indigenous British ever wanted to see their country awash with immigrants and many feel aggrieved as no one ever asked their permission to do this nor did they ever give their consent to it. I quote from Anthony Browne's book "Do We Need Mass Immigration": "The question that needs answering is: Why would one of the world's most densely crowded islands, with a naturally growing population and a growing work-force, not suffering a demographic time bomb, with desperately overstretched public services, suffering from road congestion and overcrowded public transport, suffering from a housing crisis so severe that the government has to impose high density housing on communities who really don't want it, and which has a total of four million people out of work, who want work, including 1.5 million unemployed - why should such a country need immigration at such levels that it quadruples the rate of population growth, creates parallel societies and brings enough people (here) to fill a city the size of Cambridge every six to eight months? Why, also, should the rich world drain the Third World of its talent?"

John.

Dennis Churchill: How about introducing Swiss nationality law, whereby children of one or both parents being non-Swiss receive the nationality of the non-Swiss parent or parents, even when such children are born in Switzerland? Foreigners are very rarely granted Swiss nationality - if ever.

James Jones

As far as workers from outside the EU goes lets not forget the employer can withdraw visa sponsorship at any time. This is a mighty big stick when keeping migrant workers in line. I know cases where foreign workers were required to put in unpaid overtime on weekends and public holidays, the employer knowing full well that they were in no position to refuse. Of course it wasn't long before British workers were forced to follow suit or lose their jobs for being 'lazy'.

Nimble

Living on benefits is hell; or at least that was my experience. I lost my job due to respiratory disease; managerial level within aviation. I could work just not at airports; I then spent nearly a year and over 4000 applications looking for a job. Any job. Thats 4000 applications. Locally to us in Slough I attempted factory work via agencies but the application forms were not available in english; i was told openly they would not employ english. I appreciate it may be different regionally but for my wife and I it was sheer hell. Having paid in hundreds of thousands in tax I was having a shopping budget of 12 pounds and by years end we were hundreds behind in power bills. Its not easy. And its not as clear cut as it seems as much as we all like to rant on here.

pier paolo grottesi

I had my way, and take only English only "real" and not British which is completely different!

and would send out all the immigrants who are not used to anything positive for the real economy of the country, but only to create unrest, crime, prostitution, drug dealing until the riots of August ...

Dennis Churchill

Nimble
September 1st, 2011 7:48am
Yes and I sympathize, but it is because you are used to a certain standard of living.
The welfare/work debate seems to disregard the normal assumption that people are rational. If there is little or no financial differential between working, often in an unpleasant environment, and staying at home why should someone go to work?
The problem has been disguised by mass immigration but will need to be dealt with. We can’t keep increasing our population with immigrants in order to carry these jobs out while at the same time fund a growing welfare dependant section of the community.
Multi-racial, not to mention multi-cultural, societies are inherently unstable and much too high a price to pay so that BBC and Guardian journalists can afford domestic help and better restaurants. Or even that the children and grandchildren of immigrants can feel more secure.
It needs a multi-pronged attack. Unskilled Immigration from the third world should be stopped. Welfare should be frozen and restricted. Workfare should be introduced. Our education system needs to include practical skills as part of the national curriculum.

Minnie Ovens

“Without [the migrant workers] I seriously doubt the jobs Osborne talks about would be all filled by Brits. We’d just have fewer jobs, a smaller economy and a duller country.”

Does that mean we would have a more stable country with fewer immigrants and does "duller" mean that it will be more law abiding and without such things as knifings and the Tottenham riots.
Sounds like the 1950's to me.

Dennis Churchill

Minnie Ovens
September 1st, 2011 11:26am
Yes I should think the shop keepers looking at their looted shops and the people burnt out of their homes would like to live in a Duller Country.

Minnie Ovens

Dennis Churchill, your point well made.
I sometimes look back upon the fifties of my youth and say to myself "What is the great advantage of growth?".
The two major ones are that medicine has advanced a great deal and there is far less poverty and more disposeable income.
But could we not have had this without growth?
Why is it that we seemed to have had growth in population which really has fuelled a lot of jobs which could have been done efficiently in the fifties by one person. We have layers and layers of bureaucracy, high salary structures for the great establishment oligarchy(why and how is it that most of them have so little brain to have got into positions of power?). We have growth yet we have lost nearly all our industrial base, our military, an efficient infrastructure and certainly a quality of life which was better than today in terms of morality, ethics and principles.
Just think, if we had applied Marshall plan aid and our loan from the USA wisely, we might still have both industry and manufacturing.
Our major problem in this country has not been lack of growth, it has been a lack of will by more conservative peoples to stop the great liberal assault on our values and our education system which started with the Conservarives (RAB Butler) and was fast forwarded by Crosland.
Somehow, after the war, we lost a lot of the pride, principle and bottle which had carried us through WW2 and the bastardization of the Beveridge report by the Atlee government was the basis for the change.
The rise of inefficiency, slovenliness, greed and corruption!
This isn't thought through well but there are pieces for rumination here and there.

Bickers

With our dumded down education system, easy to access benefits system and celebrity/rap culture is any wonder we're failing to produce enough skilled school leavers. The Left have a lot to answer for; they along with their useful idiot supporters at the BBC, Guardian and other many public sector institutions have ruined this once great country.

Dennis Churchill

Minnie Ovens
September 1st, 2011 12:29pm
Hayek seemed to understand when he warned about the capture of academia by the left. (The Road to Serfdom)
You are right, it is about quality of life rather than GDP and even if we use GDP it should be per capita.
The media and political classes don’t care because they believe (or pretend to believe) certain cultural Marxist “Givens”.
In terms of quality of life we could have looked towards homogenous cultures such as the Scandinavian ones of the mid and late 20th century instead it suited certain interest groups to look towards the USA and its multi-ethnic population. In order to fragment society further the white working classes, once portrayed in our media as the Salt of the Earth are now “Chavs”.Anglophobia is the only acceptable Hate Crime.
Nothing is permanent and these fads will go but the country will be left with enormous problems and as Andrew Neather revealed changed forever.

Kennybhoy

pier paolo grottesi on September 1st, 2011

'I had my way, and take only English only "real" and not British which is completely different!'

lol

Before I can properly engage with this caca Charity dictates that I ask...are you for real?

Kennybhoy

David Lindsay on August 31st, 2011 7:44pm

Just how many times and on how many blogs do you intend to recycle this particular one Young Maister? lol

Paul Shaviv

As an expat, I recently spent a few days in London, staying at one of a well-known chain of hotels in a London suburb. All of the employees were aged 20-30, quick, efficient, polite ... and Polish. (The hotel also charged me more than TEN TIMES the BT rate for anoverseas call, but hat's another story!)

Paul Shaviv

... and the hotel is only a bus ride away from sites of major rioting.