Dinghy arrivals / asylum seekers / gimmegrants

[Ymx]

The numbers are five times what they were two years back.

But yes, they’ve failed to manage it.

It is not a unique to the UK problem, the higher volumes.

But … The Tories Have Failed!!




(Labour would have been worse)

[Biffer]

Odd that YMX is relying on numbers from the Refuggee Council, who unlike him want to see people let in, and not on the figures from the government, who like him don't want to see people let in.

[Biffer]

And the backlog ….

At the risk of upsetting your right wing sensisbilities, you do realise this is wholly down the the incumbent government.
You can't spin this any other way than a failure of policy.
A VERY FECKING EXPENSIVE FAILURE OF POLICY.

Yeah, it's costing more to put people up in hotels than it would to process them.

[Tichtheid]

The numbers are five times what they were two years back.

But yes, they’ve failed to manage it.

It is not a unique to the UK problem, the higher volumes.

But … The Tories Have Failed!!




(Labour would have been worse)

That's difficult to say with any accuracy, what we do know is that there wouldn't have been a Brexit referendum under Labour and two (bolded) of the following polices and numbers wouldn't have happened as a result

The unusually high levels of net migration the UK has experienced result from several different factors that have coincided in a short period of time, including:

Visa schemes for people leaving Ukraine and Hong Kong. Together, humanitarian visa schemes and resettled refugees made up 19% of non-EU long-term immigration in 2022.

High employer demand for workers, particularly in the health and care sector; work routes made up 25% of non-EU long-term immigration in 2022.

Increasing numbers of international students, following a government-sponsored strategy to recruit more foreign students and diversify away from China—as well as the reintroduction of a two-year post-study work visa. Students made up 39% of non-EU long-term immigration.

An increase in the number of asylum seekers, who have been included in the figures for the first time since new, post-pandemic methods for estimating migration have been in place. Asylum made up 8% of non-EU long-term immigration in 2022.

The above is from is an interesting article by The Migration Observatory at Oxford Uni


I've never heard anyone complain about immigration from New Zealand and Australia into the UK, stealing jobs etc, the ones who came here on five year visas were only doing the same as the EU migrants who for the most part went back to their own countries after a relatively short period of time.

[Ymx]

I don’t have any issue with legal immigration. Especially where it is to address emerging skills shortages, or even boosting manual Labour. But fundamentally it needs to be controlled.

It’s the uncontrolled Scots we need to be wary of.

[Tichtheid]

I don’t have any issue with legal immigration. Especially where it is to address emerging skills shortages, or even boosting manual Labour. But fundamentally it needs to be controlled.

It’s the uncontrolled Scots we need to be wary of.

The figures in my post tally up to 91% of non-EU long term migration to the UK.

EU migration to the UK is now in negative figures.

From the same article

Among EU citizens, more people left than arrived, leading to negative net migration of -51,000. Similarly, more UK nationals left than arrived, with net migration of -4,000. The cumulative impact of EU and UK net emigration thus reduced the total net migration figure by 55,000.

An anecdote - my wife's previous place of employment used very highly skilled Bioinformaticians, they were mainly recruited from Spain as apparently Spain had invested heavily in courses in that field. Many of them left after Brexit and it proved very difficult to replace them.

[Paddington Bear]

I've never heard anyone complain about immigration from New Zealand and Australia into the UK, stealing jobs etc, the ones who came here on five year visas were only doing the same as the EU migrants who for the most part went back to their own countries after a relatively short period of time.

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

If we're going to have net migration run at roughly 500,000 a year for a decade our population will rise by roughly 5 million people! If you're not also putting forward a plan as to how you house/service/integrate this scale of people you're not addressing the issue seriously.

[Tichtheid]

I've never heard anyone complain about immigration from New Zealand and Australia into the UK, stealing jobs etc, the ones who came here on five year visas were only doing the same as the EU migrants who for the most part went back to their own countries after a relatively short period of time.

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

If we're going to have net migration run at roughly 500,000 a year for a decade our population will rise by roughly 5 million people! If you're not also putting forward a plan as to how you house/service/integrate this scale of people you're not addressing the issue seriously.

What or who suggests that immigration is going to run at half a million per year for ten years?

[Paddington Bear]

I've never heard anyone complain about immigration from New Zealand and Australia into the UK, stealing jobs etc, the ones who came here on five year visas were only doing the same as the EU migrants who for the most part went back to their own countries after a relatively short period of time.

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

If we're going to have net migration run at roughly 500,000 a year for a decade our population will rise by roughly 5 million people! If you're not also putting forward a plan as to how you house/service/integrate this scale of people you're not addressing the issue seriously.

What or who suggests that immigration is going to run at half a million per year for ten years?

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

[Tichtheid]

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

If we're going to have net migration run at roughly 500,000 a year for a decade our population will rise by roughly 5 million people! If you're not also putting forward a plan as to how you house/service/integrate this scale of people you're not addressing the issue seriously.

What or who suggests that immigration is going to run at half a million per year for ten years?

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

[dpedin]

What or who suggests that immigration is going to run at half a million per year for ten years?

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

The funniest thing about all of this is the mobs of racist driven Brexiteers who were complaining of the nasty Poles, Spanish and Germans coming here and nicking their jobs - these guys are leaving in droves as their home economies and standard oaf living rise above that in the UK and they have been replaced with Indian and Nigerian migrants into the UK. I can just imagine their faces as they wave 'good riddance' to their EU neighbours one day and wake up the next morning with an Indian or Nigerian family moving in in their place! Yep we have taken control of our borders, sovernity aint it, its the Brexit we wanted!

[Paddington Bear]

What or who suggests that immigration is going to run at half a million per year for ten years?

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

No, it doesn't, this is net migration. So it accounts for Brits heading to Australia, students going home, etc etc. So we need to provide housing and services for roughly 600,000 more people than we did last year.

Talking about bioinformaticians is fairly bad faith - there isn't any serious political movement or public opinion swell for closing the borders entirely, and to suggest that we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people is observably not true.

[Tichtheid]

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

No, it doesn't, this is net migration. So it accounts for Brits heading to Australia, students going home, etc etc. So we need to provide housing and services for roughly 600,000 more people than we did last year.

Talking about bioinformaticians is fairly bad faith - there isn't any serious political movement or public opinion swell for closing the borders entirely, and to suggest that we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people is observably not true.

It's funny how "bad faith" gets thrown around so easily here.

It's not difficult to extrapolate from my example, not everyone who is unemployed in the UK is able to go to Kent to spend ten hours a day picking vegetables, not everyone is a qualified dentist, not everyone is a plumber, able to do groundwork, be a hairdresser, it's not just about highly skilled jobs, not everyone can do highly physical jobs.

I'm all for training people to do the trades or whatever jobs are needed btw, but we cut that back to the bone forty years ago.

I really recommend reading the link I put up to the The Migration Observatory article.



btw, you'll have to point out where I suggested "we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people"

[Tichtheid]

I'm all for training people to do the trades or whatever jobs are needed btw, but we cut that back to the bone forty years ago.

Here's another anecdote.

Nearly 20 years ago I did the City & Guilds sparks course at the local tech. All the equipment we used in college was broken or breaking, meanwhile the college opened a brand spanking new computer suite. We were in an ancient freezing building under a viaduct which they eventually sold off to make into absurdly expensive flats.

I sat my second year exam the day before I sat my first year exam because they had FUBARed it so badly.

Try getting an electrician you can trust to do a good job at a fair price from the phone book. I'm told that in Germany it makes little difference who you phone, the people are all properly trained and the price difference isn't that much.

[Paddington Bear]

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

No, it doesn't, this is net migration. So it accounts for Brits heading to Australia, students going home, etc etc. So we need to provide housing and services for roughly 600,000 more people than we did last year.

Talking about bioinformaticians is fairly bad faith - there isn't any serious political movement or public opinion swell for closing the borders entirely, and to suggest that we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people is observably not true.

It's funny how "bad faith" gets thrown around so easily here.

It's not difficult to extrapolate from my example, not everyone who is unemployed in the UK is able to go to Kent to spend ten hours a day picking vegetables, not everyone is a qualified dentist, not everyone is a plumber, able to do groundwork, be a hairdresser, it's not just about highly skilled jobs, not everyone can do highly physical jobs.

I'm all for training people to do the trades or whatever jobs are needed btw, but we cut that back to the bone forty years ago.

I really recommend reading the link I put up to the The Migration Observatory article.



btw, you'll have to point out where I suggested "we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people"

I've read the link, agree it's interesting.
It was bad faith from you on two counts - pretending not to know the difference between gross and net figures, and pivoting a discussion about large scale migration to a small, highly skilled sector.

The particular example you gave - bioinformaticians - isn't an area I know much about whatsoever. However, it's pretty irrelevant to the discussion. There you're talking about a highly skilled, well paid job in a competitive global market. I am not in any way disputing that we should (and have to) as a country look to migration to fill some of these roles.
The same principle applied when there was a discussion about universities a few weeks ago, and it can be extrapolated wider. No one in their right mind thinks we should cap the number of Oxbridge/MIT/IIT/Harvard/Sorbonne etc level students coming to Britain. I do object to the low quality courses and applicants that were discussed at length.

You're right about vacancies. Where we differ is how we fill them. Large British businesses scream for migration to fill positions because it is easier and cheaper for them to fill a vacancy from abroad than it is to train a Brit to do it/give them decent pay and conditions. They get the benefits and pass on the negative externalities to the nation. I think you've mentioned you did agricultural work in the past, I haven't but you read about what farmers expect from their employees, no wonder they can only attract people from the third world when that's how they treat their staff!
Pay/conditions/training aren't fixed elements of employment though. As a society we need to wean ourselves off of cheap labour, because in the end it is making us all poorer and contributing deeply to a sluggish economy. When you see BBC headlines such as 'migration can lower inflation', read the small print. It's because it keeps down salaries!

This is before we get to the housing issue, on which I think our views are pretty similar. There is already a massive backlog of housing, and adding a million more people in two years, to particularly concentrated areas of the country, has made a bad situation worse. It's unsustainable and will crack our service provisions sooner or later.

[robmatic]

The last two years seem indicative of a trend, even if it 'settles' at 250,000 you're still needing the best part of housing/services for 3 million people in a decade.

That assumes the 600k or 250k will come to the UK with no one leaving.

We have to hope that in ten years the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers will not have the need they do now - that's 19% of immigration.

The student numbers will remain pretty constant as new ones come and current ones leave, there won't be an increase as such, the student numbers plus dependents make up 39% of current immigration numbers.

I read the other day that there are 1 million job vacancies in the UK (actually now I've Googled it, the ONS has it at 1.161M as of January), so the 25% of all non-EU migrants that come to work are needed. To use my previous example, not all of the currently unemployed people in the UK can fill roles as bioinformaticians.

Asylum seekers made up 8% of non EU migrants, or 48K people (at 600K total), we have a duty to take in asylum seekers, rightly so. 48K per year doesn't seem that much to me in a population of 67.3M, it's 0.07% of the population, if I've done my sums correctly.

As stated before, the asylum seeker numbers are lower than the numbers of EU and UK leavers

No, it doesn't, this is net migration. So it accounts for Brits heading to Australia, students going home, etc etc. So we need to provide housing and services for roughly 600,000 more people than we did last year.

Talking about bioinformaticians is fairly bad faith - there isn't any serious political movement or public opinion swell for closing the borders entirely, and to suggest that we're having a net inflow of c.600,000 highly skilled people is observably not true.

The real beauty of the present UK immigration approach is that it's not very good at bringing in the highly skilled people and it isn't very effective at reducing the overall numbers either.

Up until a couple of years ago I was an immigration consultant and dealing with the Entrepreneur/Start-up route, which was supposed to attract high calibre tech types, was a complete waste of time. We also couldn't get one of the most famous actors in Turkey and the Middle East in through the Global Talent route.

My wife would probably be one of the 'good' immigrants (speaks perfect English, good job, married to a Brit, mother to a British citizen, Master's degree from a British university etc.) but the spouse visa process is a bureacratic ballache so we are not particularly encouraged to come to the UK.

Meanwhile, there are still vast numbers of Deliveroo drivers and car wash attendants making it through because they are lucky/persistent/desperate enough to get through the bureacratic hoops.

[Paddington Bear]

I'm all for training people to do the trades or whatever jobs are needed btw, but we cut that back to the bone forty years ago.

Here's another anecdote.

Nearly 20 years ago I did the City & Guilds sparks course at the local tech. All the equipment we used in college was broken or breaking, meanwhile the college opened a brand spanking new computer suite. We were in an ancient freezing building under a viaduct which they eventually sold off to make into absurdly expensive flats.

I sat my second year exam the day before I sat my first year exam because they had FUBARed it so badly.

Try getting an electrician you can trust to do a good job at a fair price from the phone book. I'm told that in Germany it makes little difference who you phone, the people are all properly trained and the price difference isn't that much.

Entirely fair point. I'm sure a lot of things are similar now, it will only change if business need to fund it themselves on a proper scale. German business invest over double what British ones do in technical training.

Electricians wise maybe I'm lucky living where I do but we can get pretty reliable tradesmen at decent prices in this part of the world. Checkatrade and similar sites seem to do a good job of weeding out the chancers.

[Tichtheid]

I've read the link, agree it's interesting.
It was bad faith from you on two counts - pretending not to know the difference between gross and net figures,

Nope, that was actually a genuine mistake on my part, in my attempt to get the arithmetic right I overlooked the 55K leavers as contributing to the net.

and pivoting a discussion about large scale migration to a small, highly skilled sector.

I used that particular example as it's one I happen to know quite a lot about as my wife worked for a company that employed people with that skillset. As I say it's not that great a leap to extrapolate it to other work.

[Tichtheid]

You're right about vacancies. Where we differ is how we fill them. Large British businesses scream for migration to fill positions because it is easier and cheaper for them to fill a vacancy from abroad than it is to train a Brit to do it/give them decent pay and conditions. They get the benefits and pass on the negative externalities to the nation. I think you've mentioned you did agricultural work in the past, I haven't but you read about what farmers expect from their employees, no wonder they can only attract people from the third world when that's how they treat their staff!

Part of the problem is that we in the UK are not prepared to pay what things should really cost. We spend a fraction of our household budget on food compared to comparable countries in Europe

[Paddington Bear]

I've read the link, agree it's interesting.
It was bad faith from you on two counts - pretending not to know the difference between gross and net figures,

Nope, that was actually a genuine mistake on my part, in my attempt to get the arithmetic right I overlooked the 55K leavers as contributing to the net.

and pivoting a discussion about large scale migration to a small, highly skilled sector.

I used that particular example as it's one I happen to know quite a lot about as my wife worked for a company that employed people with that skillset. As I say it's not that great a leap to extrapolate it to other work.

Fair enough on the first, I take that back.

The second I think I covered. Some highly skilled jobs will always require migrants to fill, this shouldn't be the default or used for low skilled work, or as an excuse not to train employees/innovate/improve pay and conditions.

[Tichtheid]

I've read the link, agree it's interesting.
It was bad faith from you on two counts - pretending not to know the difference between gross and net figures,

Nope, that was actually a genuine mistake on my part, in my attempt to get the arithmetic right I overlooked the 55K leavers as contributing to the net.

and pivoting a discussion about large scale migration to a small, highly skilled sector.

I used that particular example as it's one I happen to know quite a lot about as my wife worked for a company that employed people with that skillset. As I say it's not that great a leap to extrapolate it to other work.

Fair enough on the first, I take that back.

The second I think I covered. Some highly skilled jobs will always require migrants to fill, this shouldn't be the default or used for low skilled work, or as an excuse not to train employees/innovate/improve pay and conditions.

Whatever the case, a differing point of view is not a bad faith argument.

[Sandstorm]

You're right about vacancies. Where we differ is how we fill them. Large British businesses scream for migration to fill positions because it is easier and cheaper for them to fill a vacancy from abroad than it is to train a Brit to do it/give them decent pay and conditions. They get the benefits and pass on the negative externalities to the nation. I think you've mentioned you did agricultural work in the past, I haven't but you read about what farmers expect from their employees, no wonder they can only attract people from the third world when that's how they treat their staff!

Part of the problem is that we in the UK are not prepared to pay what things should really cost. We spend a fraction of our household budget on food compared to comparable countries in Europe

Bingo!

[C69]

You're right about vacancies. Where we differ is how we fill them. Large British businesses scream for migration to fill positions because it is easier and cheaper for them to fill a vacancy from abroad than it is to train a Brit to do it/give them decent pay and conditions. They get the benefits and pass on the negative externalities to the nation. I think you've mentioned you did agricultural work in the past, I haven't but you read about what farmers expect from their employees, no wonder they can only attract people from the third world when that's how they treat their staff!

Part of the problem is that we in the UK are not prepared to pay what things should really cost. We spend a fraction of our household budget on food compared to comparable countries in Europe

Bingo!

How do families pay for anything when their energy costs have trebled and inflation is double their pay rise?

[Sandstorm]

Become a Tory donor obviously

[Line6 HXFX]

Universal credit doesn't work for temporary work.


Say you sign off, because have two months seasonal temp work in a field, picking fruit...you would have to save five weeks of it to carry you for the five weeks you have to wait for benefits and to get any money when you inevitably have to sign on again, after your seasonal job ended.

So you have to survive on effectively 3 weeks paid employment for the 2 months in work, and save the other 5 for when you are waiting for universal credit.

Yup, this actually is a thing they didn't spot when they created Universal Credit.
Iain Duncan Smith and Universal Credit killed temp/ seasonal work stone dead for British people.

[Sandstorm]

Universal credit doesn't work for temporary work.


Say you sign off, because have two months seasonal temp work in a field, picking fruit...you would have to save five weeks of it to carry you for the five weeks you have to wait for benefits and to get any money when you inevitably have to sign on again, after your seasonal job ended.

So you have to survive on effectively 3 weeks paid employment for the 2 months in work, and save the other 5 for when you are waiting for universal credit.

Yup, this actually is a thing they didn't spot when they created Universal Credit.
Iain Duncan Smith and Universal Credit killed temp/ seasonal work stone dead for British people.

I didn’t know this. Interesting and really poor from the government.

[Line6 HXFX]

Universal credit was based off of the assumption you are out of work, and have a big payout to survive on (that the government wanted you to dig into, in those 5 weeks) .. not that you just had six weeks temp work and will be in penury, beggjng foodbank mode for five weeks, and utterrly discouraged in doing temp and seasonal work again.

Also (last time I checked) in 60% of cases people have to wait 10 weeks plus for Universal Credit, not 5, because of holdups and cock ups.

To leave Universeal Credit to do a month or two of temp work is financial suicide.

[Tichtheid]

I used to do vegetable picking if I had no fencing work on, usually in January.

There was always an element of black comedy when the Dole turned up because half the workforce would take off like bullets running across the fields to avoid identification.

[tabascoboy]

Any day now, I expect certain elements of this government to revive the plan to have pensioners rounded up and carted away to work in the fields for less than minimum wage. Australia also seemed to have the same idea more recently

[dpedin]

I used to do vegetable picking if I had no fencing work on, usually in January.

There was always an element of black comedy when the Dole turned up because half the workforce would take off like bullets running across the fields to avoid identification.

I spent many a 'happy' summer picking rasps and strawberries around Dundee/Monifieth and then picking tatties during the Tattie Holidays. I then spent a summer with Christian Salvesen unloading soft fruit and putting it into the cold store, luckily I avoided the dreaded pea line! Back breaking work for not much dosh but fine for students etc. During the Glasgow Fair the fields were flooded with Weegies earning a few bob. It was and always has been casual work with no one I knew declaring their earnings. Changed days now though - these days have gone as has the reliance on Eastern European seasonal workers. Not sure how these fruit will get picked now and if they are we will pay more.

[C69]

So the abject failure of Sunak's teams policy highlighted again yesterday.
616 people detected crossing the channel yesterday in errr small boats. Highest number by far this year.

Useless totally useless and expensive.

8380 so far this year

Unless they get below 2010 numbers their tough stance is utter bollocks.

[I like neeps]

I used to do vegetable picking if I had no fencing work on, usually in January.

There was always an element of black comedy when the Dole turned up because half the workforce would take off like bullets running across the fields to avoid identification.

I spent many a 'happy' summer picking rasps and strawberries around Dundee/Monifieth and then picking tatties during the Tattie Holidays. I then spent a summer with Christian Salvesen unloading soft fruit and putting it into the cold store, luckily I avoided the dreaded pea line! Back breaking work for not much dosh but fine for students etc. During the Glasgow Fair the fields were flooded with Weegies earning a few bob. It was and always has been casual work with no one I knew declaring their earnings. Changed days now though - these days have gone as has the reliance on Eastern European seasonal workers. Not sure how these fruit will get picked now and if they are we will pay more.

I used to do some off the books tattie roguing for my friends dad. It was great how much you thought £50 was at 14/15. I also did some berry picking around Newtyle where I lived at 16/17 but was nowhere near as effective as the Eastern Europeans who would come and live 3 months in some sh*t static caravan and even hungover they had me for speed. Quite embarrassing really but it's not the easiest work. The worst part about fruit picking is fruit is grown miles from cities so people have to live in caravans which are awful.

[fishfoodie]

Part of the problem is that we in the UK are not prepared to pay what things should really cost. We spend a fraction of our household budget on food compared to comparable countries in Europe

Bingo!

How do families pay for anything when their energy costs have trebled and inflation is double their pay rise?

Same root cause for both issues too !

Food is cheap, because the Supermarkets screw the farmers over prices, which in turn forces the farmer to screw the seasonal workers; and all so the supermarkets can pay the directors massive salaries, & dole out dividends, which is why the power companies take the mickey too on Energy prices.

If you don't have regulators or Politicians who are prepared to protect the consumers, then business will do what they're doing.The Red Tape the likes of JRM delights it burning is often there to protect the consumer.

[derriz]

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

Stagnant productivity/wages is almost uniquely a UK phenomena and is not related to influx of workers. In Europe alone, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Spain all have much higher proportions of immigrants - sometime two or three times higher - but none suffer the Brit-disease of stagnant productivity and wages.

All of these high-immigration countries have experienced reasonable rates of productivity growth since 2010 even as more and more immigrants arrived and nearly all earn more per hour worked than in the UK. In that 10-12 years, even an ex-communist country like Estonia have overtaken the UK in terms of GDP per hour worked.

This gap opened up in 2010 which is almost exactly around the time the Tories took over. But rather than even considering that Tory economic policy might have something to do with this - particularly that liberalising low-paid work means there is little incentive for businesses to invest in technology and the like which would raise productivity - you make for the classic dick move - let's blame the immigrants.

[Paddington Bear]

The complaint is scale. I mentioned before that the economic element isn't 'stealing our jobs', its that a constant major flow of workers leads to stagnating wages and low productivity growth.

Stagnant productivity/wages is almost uniquely a UK phenomena and is not related to influx of workers. In Europe alone, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Spain all have much higher proportions of immigrants - sometime two or three times higher - but none suffer the Brit-disease of stagnant productivity and wages.

All of these high-immigration countries have experienced reasonable rates of productivity growth since 2010 even as more and more immigrants arrived and nearly all earn more per hour worked than in the UK. In that 10-12 years, even an ex-communist country like Estonia have overtaken the UK in terms of GDP per hour worked.

This gap opened up in 2010 which is almost exactly around the time the Tories took over. But rather than even considering that Tory economic policy might have something to do with this - particularly that liberalising low-paid work means there is little incentive for businesses to invest in technology and the like which would raise productivity - you make for the classic dick move - let's blame the immigrants.

Can you get some stats on higher proportion of immigrants to population for some of these countries? Discarding Luxembourg etc as being so small as to be not comparable in any meaningful way. I'm happy to be proved wrong but I have severe doubts.

As for wage growth, I've quickly checked Britain's compared to Germany, Spain and Belgium and none are impressive in any way, and whilst Britain's is well documented as being poor it doesn't really come across as particularly anomalous in that group. The gap emerging between the US and Europe on that measure is well commented upon.

Leaving aside just deciding to be personal (fuck off, as an aside to that) 'liberalising low-paid work' doesn't work unless you have an increasing labour supply. Part of that came from making the benefits system harder to access, any guesses where the larger part came from? You probably already knew the answer to that but at least you got your chance to look good on the internet.

British productivity growth ended with the financial crash btw, as is blindingly obvious to anyone prepared to take a look. The model Thatcher founded and Blair carried forward couldn't recover from it for obvious reasons, and we are yet to engage seriously with viable alternatives.

[derriz]

Can you not google this yourself? First entry I see: https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign ... lation.htm and/or https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm.

It became personal when you started blaming immigrants for poor economic outcomes, when there are wealthier peer countries that have far higher immigration. So likewise, feel free to go fuck yourself and your "immigrants are making us all poorer" theories.

Making it relatively cheap/flexible to hire unskilled labour, supports growth for lower-skilled jobs which will cause overall productivity to fall. This is exactly what economic theory predicts. As a policy it has upsides - lower unemployment which is a big positive given the damage long-term unemployment does to society but it has the downside of reducing the incentive for individual businesses to invest in higher automation, etc.. It has nothing to do with immigrants.

[Paddington Bear]

Can you not google this yourself? First entry I see: https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign ... lation.htm and/or https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm.

It became personal when you started blaming immigrants for poor economic outcomes, when there are wealthier peer countries that have far higher immigration. So likewise, feel free to go fuck yourself and your "immigrants are making us all poorer" theories.

Making it relatively cheap/flexible to hire unskilled labour, supports growth for lower-skilled jobs which will cause overall productivity to fall. This is exactly what economic theory predicts. As a policy it has upsides - lower unemployment which is a big positive given the damage long-term unemployment does to society but it has the downside of reducing the incentive for individual businesses to invest in higher automation, etc.. It has nothing to do with immigrants.

2018 figures struggle for relevance given net migration figures since. Still, fair enough, some of those numbers surprise me.

‘You’re blaming immigrants’ is such a poor way of interpreting ‘net migration of 500,000 people a year is unsustainable’. Just an attempt to shut down a discussion.

And again, can you not grasp that liberalising the workforce is a trick that only works once unless you have a massive supply of workers each year?

[petej]

The numbers are five times what they were two years back.

But yes, they’ve failed to manage it.

It is not a unique to the UK problem, the higher volumes.

But … The Tories Have Failed!!




(Labour would have been worse)

Now I know you're trolling with the labour bit. This government is dysfunctional and destructive since brexit but Johnson in particular. It rips something up and then makes up something half arsed to replace it that doesn't really work then blames the civil servants for not meeting the vision. It then moves onto creating another mess. An example of this dysfunction is the ability to check imports from the EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-65757282
Where as the EU prepared and has been checking our exports.

[dpedin]

I used to do vegetable picking if I had no fencing work on, usually in January.

There was always an element of black comedy when the Dole turned up because half the workforce would take off like bullets running across the fields to avoid identification.

I spent many a 'happy' summer picking rasps and strawberries around Dundee/Monifieth and then picking tatties during the Tattie Holidays. I then spent a summer with Christian Salvesen unloading soft fruit and putting it into the cold store, luckily I avoided the dreaded pea line! Back breaking work for not much dosh but fine for students etc. During the Glasgow Fair the fields were flooded with Weegies earning a few bob. It was and always has been casual work with no one I knew declaring their earnings. Changed days now though - these days have gone as has the reliance on Eastern European seasonal workers. Not sure how these fruit will get picked now and if they are we will pay more.

I used to do some off the books tattie roguing for my friends dad. It was great how much you thought £50 was at 14/15. I also did some berry picking around Newtyle where I lived at 16/17 but was nowhere near as effective as the Eastern Europeans who would come and live 3 months in some sh*t static caravan and even hungover they had me for speed. Quite embarrassing really but it's not the easiest work. The worst part about fruit picking is fruit is grown miles from cities so people have to live in caravans which are awful.

Just saw this ..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-65873952

[C69]

The numbers are five times what they were two years back.

But yes, they’ve failed to manage it.

It is not a unique to the UK problem, the higher volumes.

But … The Tories Have Failed!!




(Labour would have been worse)

Now I know you're trolling with the labour bit. This government is dysfunctional and destructive since brexit but Johnson in particular. It rips something up and then makes up something half arsed to replace it that doesn't really work then blames the civil servants for not meeting the vision. It then moves onto creating another mess. An example of this dysfunction is the ability to check imports from the EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-65757282
Where as the EU prepared and has been checking our exports.

I disagree I think he is so blinded and cyclopian that he actually believes the comically axiomatic (in his eye) facts he pens.
he has been schooled on this thread more times than an middle aged Syrian refugee pretending to be a teenage boy.
Scolded more times an a ginger step child.