Sadly yes. When I watched that clip and it began with Justine Roberts saying "Over half the questions we've received have been about the same thing...", I thought "oh great, it's going to be trans issues, isn't it".
I was pleasantly surprised it was the much simpler issue of Boris lying.
"But travel bosses say they spent the pandemic warning ministers that unless they got sector specific support and funding, the significant cuts they made to their businesses would be incredibly damaging. They say that’s the damage we’re seeing now.
One boss says getting back to the levels of skills and training "doesn’t happen at the flick of a switch" and said being blamed now for it - when they had told the government they needed support - was "very distressing"."
The simple question is if they didn't have the staff to facilitate taking these people on planes, why did they sell tickets for flights that could not happen.
It's interesting that some of those on the right on here, when anybody points out stuff in the UK that isn't going well (and there's a lot), are instantly responding with "yeah, but it's just as bad, if not worse, in x, y and z countries". Passport delays? Worse elsewhere. Flight cancellations? Dublin/Amsterdam. And so on.
Whatever happened to the self-confidence of folk that the UK was "world-beating" and that the whole point of living here was that we were better than anywhere else?
No. The point is that the ending of FOM can’t have contributed to delays at Amsterdam and Dublin - it looks like globally an industry that paid its staff poorly and treated them badly is reaping the rewards of that behaviour, except to some it must be because of Brexit….
Not Brexit but the ending of FOM which has shrunk the workforce. It’s just a fact, Carlotta, however you want to blather.
Yet net migration is close to record highs again.
I’m not sure this has anything to do with FoM. It’s a universal problem across the planet, post pandemic
eg when I first noticed UK pubs and restaurants and hotels struggling for staff after covid I confess my immediate reaction was: this must be Brexit. All the nice Slovenian waitresses have gone home
They may have gone home, but since then I have travelled to the USA and Sri Lanka, Georgia and Turkey, Greece and Spain - and literally everywhere is the same. New Orleans was so bad one oyster house in the French Quarter had one waitress serving 200 people and the poor woman was in tears, and they had to shut the door to any more customers.
The pandemic has completely fucked the labour market, worldwide, in multiple ways. It will probably take years to settle down again
Brexit is just a tiny part of this, if it has any impact at all
The pandemic led to large numbers of hospitality and retail staff realising there are jobs out there that pay more and have better conditions.
It’s the same everywhere in the world right now - except perhaps here in Dubai, where there’s never going to be a shortage of Filipinos and Indians willing to work for $300 a month.
If FoM were still a thing, there would be a massive poverty problem among the low paid in the UK right now, with millions of people unable to find even minimum wage work. As it is, businesses are offering substantially higher wages to the lower paid, which offsets the cost of living to an extent the government couldn’t have dreamed about.
It was always said that a Johnson government made up of 100% Brexit Ultras would have no excuses. We're now seeing the results. The police don't function The NHS doesn't function People can't afford heating or petrol. You can't even get a plane to take you out of here. The country has never been in a more shambolic state..... It's not even funny anymore.........I just heard Nadine Dorries saying how loved Boris Johnson is...... I'll never make fun of Long Bailey again...
Still at least we can manage having a football match unlike the french
I take it you didnt follow the England v Italy final then?
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
You're in the unusual position of planning to retire early. Very early. If prices are higher and you have to work longer to afford the standard of living you aspire to, so that people who worry if they'll ever be able to afford to retire at all can be paid better, then I think that's a good thing. All the moaning about higher prices for consumers be damned.
A whole bunch of things have probably been too cheap over the last couple of decades because the pay of the people doing the work was driven down. That was not progress.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Did I say it was right? The point is it used to be the other extreme, a closed shop of very cushy gig for many of these customer facing roles, now its minimum wage....but with all the extra hassle, poor quality of life and cost of living near an airport. So it doesn't surprise me that they are struggling to recruit quickly.
Does it cost more to live near an airport? I’d have thought less, to be honest.
Yes it does. Living with easy access to an airport if you are a business / business person etc is highly desirable. If you go around say near Gatwick, huge industrial parks with businesses who are either connected directly to the airport or reliant on air freight as part of their business model. All those people have to live somewhere. Plus lots of housing stock gets taken up by pilots / cabin crew who often have rooms in HMOs as somewhere to crash.
But there's a reason Nicola Sturgeon is still all over SNP election leaflets, but Boris Johnson was missing from recent Tory election leaflets. One of them is an asset to their party's electoral prospects and the other a millstone.
Labour's rise in Scotland is very interesting and could yet have big implications come the General Election.
The weird dross running the SNP just now , colluding with the odious greens, are certainly doing their best to revive Labour. Given the Tories are hated and the Lib Dem's are a joke it is the only place you can go if sick of Sturgeon and her ragtag bunch of losers.
It's interesting that some of those on the right on here, when anybody points out stuff in the UK that isn't going well (and there's a lot), are instantly responding with "yeah, but it's just as bad, if not worse, in x, y and z countries". Passport delays? Worse elsewhere. Flight cancellations? Dublin/Amsterdam. And so on.
Whatever happened to the self-confidence of folk that the UK was "world-beating" and that the whole point of living here was that we were better than anywhere else?
No. The point is that the ending of FOM can’t have contributed to delays at Amsterdam and Dublin - it looks like globally an industry that paid its staff poorly and treated them badly is reaping the rewards of that behaviour, except to some it must be because of Brexit….
Not Brexit but the ending of FOM which has shrunk the workforce. It’s just a fact, Carlotta, however you want to blather.
Yet net migration is close to record highs again.
I’m not sure this has anything to do with FoM. It’s a universal problem across the planet, post pandemic
eg when I first noticed UK pubs and restaurants and hotels struggling for staff after covid I confess my immediate reaction was: this must be Brexit. All the nice Slovenian waitresses have gone home
They may have gone home, but since then I have travelled to the USA and Sri Lanka, Georgia and Turkey, Greece and Spain - and literally everywhere is the same. New Orleans was so bad one oyster house in the French Quarter had one waitress serving 200 people and the poor woman was in tears, and they had to shut the door to any more customers.
The pandemic has completely fucked the labour market, worldwide, in multiple ways. It will probably take years to settle down again
Brexit is just a tiny part of this, if it has any impact at all
Of course. I think you are going a bit too easy on Brexit, but to be fair you at least are one of the honest Brexiters who concede that there is an economic cost to increased political autonomy.
Most deny it, because they voted for the sunny uplands.
Suppose these shortages are one reason Granddaughter Two, at 'almost' 16 has landed a summer job waitressing.
It was always said that a Johnson government made up of 100% Brexit Ultras would have no excuses. We're now seeing the results. The police don't function The NHS doesn't function People can't afford heating or petrol. You can't even get a plane to take you out of here. The country has never been in a more shambolic state..... It's not even funny anymore.........I just heard Nadine Dorries saying how loved Boris Johnson is...... I'll never make fun of Long Bailey again...
Still at least we can manage having a football match unlike the french
I take it you didnt follow the England v Italy final then?
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
Typical gotcha question from the team that ambushed Gordon Brown by asking what is his favourite biscuit.
Apparently he admits to considering resignation but for the good of the country (he means himself) now is not the time with Ukraine and the cost of living crisis
No Boris you are absolutely not indispensable, as your mps are about to demonstrate to you
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
You're in the unusual position of planning to retire early. Very early. If prices are higher and you have to work longer to afford the standard of living you aspire to, so that people who worry if they'll ever be able to afford to retire at all can be paid better, then I think that's a good thing. All the moaning about higher prices for consumers be damned.
A whole bunch of things have probably been too cheap over the last couple of decades because the pay of the people doing the work was driven down. That was not progress.
I don’t see the connection between my situation and what I’m trying to state which is just economic principles.
My own view is that income (and wealth) disparities are obscenely high, but that the way to address this is via a redistributive tax system rather than measures to impede growth.
I see FOM as having been a significant boost to productivity and growth, although I think successive governments made a very bad job of either defending it or ensuring that the most affected communities were profiting thereby.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I agree that the significant time some sectors had off in the pandemic has had a significant impact on attitude. People forget that millions of people were paid by the Government to do nothing for many months and they enjoyed it and don't want to go back to normal work (but still want the money)
I also think WFH is really not a good thing. The difference in performance we see in organisations that now WFH compared to 2019 is stark. You cannot get hold of anyone, their policies are not followed and you do not get paid. WFH for many people means not working.
Transport Scotland: 'Regrettably this decision appears to mean further disruption for passengers in the immediate term given there is no indication that drivers will return to previous Rest Day Working and overtime arrangements,'
UPDATED Nationalised ScotRail faces months of disruption as train drivers union rejects'final' pay offer
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
And pay mill owner fo' privilege
You have a mill owner to work for?
{levers lid of a case of Chateau de Chassilier}
You were lucky t' have mill owner.....
On a serious note - my theory is that, around the world, the people in the minimum pay jobs are not adventurous, generally. Either for safety, or because the kind of people who work those jobs don't do change. COVID forced them out of these jobs - no shift, no pay.
They found new jobs.
They are sticking with these new jobs, either because they don't want to change again and/or they are better jobs.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Would be surprised if the evidence could be strong enough either way that direct opponents on Brexit won't claim the opposite thing, both with equal confidence. At which point it kind of becomes futile to debate unless it is amongst genuine Brexit neutrals.
Incidentally, the highest inflation rate in the EU is 20%, in Estonia, which suggests that HMG policy of keeping as many Ukrainian refugees out of the UK as possible has been a policy intervention that has succeeded in reducing the extent of the increase in inflation, for all that is been morally lacking.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
You're in the unusual position of planning to retire early. Very early. If prices are higher and you have to work longer to afford the standard of living you aspire to, so that people who worry if they'll ever be able to afford to retire at all can be paid better, then I think that's a good thing. All the moaning about higher prices for consumers be damned.
A whole bunch of things have probably been too cheap over the last couple of decades because the pay of the people doing the work was driven down. That was not progress.
Yes - it's not a balanced economy. Food has been too cheap = low paid food workers, of all sorts.
However, property (to buy and to rent) has been too expensive (in much of the country) = ridiculous money/profits for property developers, estate agents, landlords, inheriters etc.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
There’s no statistical evidence for huge (real) pay rises, save for those caused by sudden supply shocks, like the truck drivers last year.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
There is also a great deal of segmentation in the labour market.
World wide, there is a shortage of highly educated professionals. So if you are a highly paid professional, total FOM has nearly no effect on your wages - the market is failing to clear, very often, despite big wage increases. So a high skilled professional sees only upsides to FOM.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
You're in the unusual position of planning to retire early. Very early. If prices are higher and you have to work longer to afford the standard of living you aspire to, so that people who worry if they'll ever be able to afford to retire at all can be paid better, then I think that's a good thing. All the moaning about higher prices for consumers be damned.
A whole bunch of things have probably been too cheap over the last couple of decades because the pay of the people doing the work was driven down. That was not progress.
I don’t see the connection between my situation and what I’m trying to state which is just economic principles.
My own view is that income (and wealth) disparities are obscenely high, but that the way to address this is via a redistributive tax system rather than measures to impede growth.
I see FOM as having been a significant boost to productivity and growth, although I think successive governments made a very bad job of either defending it or ensuring that the most affected communities were profiting thereby.
It's much better if the economy, by design, pays people well enough, rather than leaving people reliant on state handouts that are at the mercy of a change in the political weather.
Also, in purely economic terms, it makes sense to have labour priced accurately so that it is used efficiently.
But there's a reason Nicola Sturgeon is still all over SNP election leaflets, but Boris Johnson was missing from recent Tory election leaflets. One of them is an asset to their party's electoral prospects and the other a millstone.
Labour's rise in Scotland is very interesting and could yet have big implications come the General Election.
The weird dross running the SNP just now , colluding with the odious greens, are certainly doing their best to revive Labour. Given the Tories are hated and the Lib Dem's are a joke it is the only place you can go if sick of Sturgeon and her ragtag bunch of losers.
It's the sheer positivity of your posts that inspire us all
Transport Scotland: 'Regrettably this decision appears to mean further disruption for passengers in the immediate term given there is no indication that drivers will return to previous Rest Day Working and overtime arrangements,'
UPDATED Nationalised ScotRail faces months of disruption as train drivers union rejects'final' pay offer
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
Just thinking that later on tonight Scotland might be the most hated nation in the world.
Although that honour may fall to Wales on Sunday, although the Welsh are used to being hated because of their rugby fans.
What on earth have they done? Threatened to deep-fry the ex-Kabul puppies and eat them with 'sauce'?
If you beat Ukraine tonight in the soccerball world cup qualifier then Scotland will be hated all round the world except Russia.
Pretty unlikely I should think ( I refer to the first 4 words).
Ukraine are a little better than Scotland. Home advantage tips the balance towards Scotland, so this is a game where none of the three results would be surprising.
Ukraine are 5/2 which is much bigger than I thought they would be, I was expecting 6/4
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
That seems rather doubtful to me, if you are a low paid person trying to buy services which are no longer available or only at increased prices.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
There is also a great deal of segmentation in the labour market.
World wide, there is a shortage of highly educated professionals. So if you are a highly paid professional, total FOM has nearly no effect on your wages - the market is failing to clear, very often, despite big wage increases. So a high skilled professional sees only upsides to FOM.
Not really true. In many professional fields there is a bigger shortage locally than globally, so FOM might have depressed wages for these people. My own field of economists in finance for instance is full of European and global talent taking up jobs in London. It probably didn't have this effect, for the same reasons it didn't depress wages more generally. But the idea that skilled professions are uniquely shielded from globalisation is bollocks.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
It's all been skewed by Covid (and post Covid recovery), but has there been any meaningful change yet in the proportion of people on minimum wage?
(And of course, inflation and changes to the minimum wage have a big effect here.)
I did realise I was stirring up a hornet’s nest. It is the taboo-est of taboo subjects.
I’m not even an immigration ultra, like @Richard_Tyndall. I might even venture to agree that EU migration was “too high”. Certainly it lacked full democratic consent.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Incidentally, the highest inflation rate in the EU is 20%, in Estonia, which suggests that HMG policy of keeping as many Ukrainian refugees out of the UK as possible has been a policy intervention that has succeeded in reducing the extent of the increase in inflation, for all that is been morally lacking.
BIB: dunno. Are they measuring inflation in the same way? I doubt it. Many economic measures are a bit nebulous. Look at the difference between CPI and RPI for instance, which both aim to measure inflation in Britain. If there is no difference between EU 8% and UK 9% then try EU 8% vs UK 11%. And if Estonia is 20% and the EU as a whole 8% then which other countries are higher or lower and does it even make sense to average them?
It looks like that 40,000 fake tickets from Liverpool fans which dwindled to less than 3,000 includes people like myself and Andrew Robertson's friends and family whose tickets were genuine and from UEFA.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
There is also a great deal of segmentation in the labour market.
World wide, there is a shortage of highly educated professionals. So if you are a highly paid professional, total FOM has nearly no effect on your wages - the market is failing to clear, very often, despite big wage increases. So a high skilled professional sees only upsides to FOM.
Not really true. In many professional fields there is a bigger shortage locally than globally, so FOM might have depressed wages for these people. My own field of economists in finance for instance is full of European and global talent taking up jobs in London. It probably didn't have this effect, for the same reasons it didn't depress wages more generally. But the idea that skilled professions are uniquely shielded from globalisation is bollocks.
In most of the professions, there is no way the jobs could be filled without immigrants. You'd have to double the output of high end university graduates as a start, probably.
I think the airport situation is quite simple. 20 years ago working at an airport paid really well, stupidly so in many respects for all the retail, cleaning etc etc, supposed making up for all that inconvenience of weird shifts and anti-social hours.
With the influx of cheap labour its now nowhere near as well paid but still all downside including extremely high cost of housing near airports. Then everything stopped and people have gone why the hell do i actually do this, and very difficult to attract them back.
The FOM aspect is a bit of a red herring, remember any EU national working here could easily have got right to remain and millions did. Its more likely went back to home country during covid, reevaluated living 10 to a house in Crawley to earn poor wages while having to start work at 4am every day.
I had no idea that airport work was ever particularly attractive in terms of pay. That's news to me.
Mrs U as a teenager worked at one. Her retail job paid a very large premium compared to working in the same shop in the local town. The pay was so good it was very difficult to ever actually get your foot in the door, it was always my mate knows such and such will give you in.
And this should continue because?
Of course people should be paid properly and to the extent airport managers have been shafting lower paid workers they deserve what has come to the them,
But consumers have to pay for this somewhere down the line - in higher landing charges or higher prices.
Sounds like an argument for FOM keeping wages down, so consumers can have cheaper travel on the back of others low pay
I think you have unwittingly just made the case for Brexit and controlled immigration
Not at all.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Yes, that’s a common economic theory seen in text books.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
The evidence from the UK doesn't support the hypothesis that EU immigration pushed down wages, actually.
Overall that’s correct, but only because of above-inflation rises in the legal minimum wage.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
There is also a great deal of segmentation in the labour market.
World wide, there is a shortage of highly educated professionals. So if you are a highly paid professional, total FOM has nearly no effect on your wages - the market is failing to clear, very often, despite big wage increases. So a high skilled professional sees only upsides to FOM.
Not really true. In many professional fields there is a bigger shortage locally than globally, so FOM might have depressed wages for these people. My own field of economists in finance for instance is full of European and global talent taking up jobs in London. It probably didn't have this effect, for the same reasons it didn't depress wages more generally. But the idea that skilled professions are uniquely shielded from globalisation is bollocks.
Perhaps. But from what I've seen, across a number of professions, the shortages were such that FOM merely reduced the shortage.
You certainly didn't see flat wages among the professional classes.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Trouble is that the fruit will taste even crappier.
*wonders about moving to a house with a bigger garden*
Incidentally, the highest inflation rate in the EU is 20%, in Estonia, which suggests that HMG policy of keeping as many Ukrainian refugees out of the UK as possible has been a policy intervention that has succeeded in reducing the extent of the increase in inflation, for all that is been morally lacking.
BIB: dunno. Are they measuring inflation in the same way? I doubt it. Many economic measures are a bit nebulous. Look at the difference between CPI and RPI for instance, which both aim to measure inflation in Britain. If there is no difference between EU 8% and UK 9% then try EU 8% vs UK 11%. And if Estonia is 20% and the EU as a whole 8% then which other countries are higher or lower and does it even make sense to average them?
CPI is measured in exactly the same way in the UK as in the EU as the UK CPI measure is in fact the EU harmonised CPI. The RPI is garbage.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Trouble is that the fruit will taste even crappier.
*wonders about moving to a house with a bigger garden*
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
I'm a well known sceptic of productivity figures for many reasons, but - fundamentally - I struggle with the fact that the rest of Europe (even places with essentially zero unemployment like Austria, Germany and Switzerland) also had FoM, significant migration, and yet saw productivity numbers rise.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
CBA to read all of that(and I suspect you haven't either unless you have a very dull life), though did notice plenty of ambiguity on my speed read . Fact remains that many EU nationals have left and are discouraged from returning.
Meanwhile net immigration (I guess quite a bit questionable or illegal) continues unabated from RoW. And this was one of the big con tricks of the xenophobic propaganda of Farage et al. The reality was that our government could have done something about 50% of migration from because it was not affected by FoM because it came from RoW. Meanwhile, lots of thickies thought "vote Brexit to keep out immigrants". Reality was the government could have controlled 50% but did FA .
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Britain has a fantastically competitive supermarket sector.
British food prices are among the lowest in the developed world.
Someone will be along soon to complain about underpaid supermarket workers…
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
UK productivity growth slowed after the GFC by exactly the same extent as productivity growth in the EU. Productivity growth fell in all the advanced economies including the US at the same time. Economists still don't fully understand the reasons for it, but it is so generalised that it is highly unlikely that an idiosyncratic factor like EU FOM was the reason in the UK.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
To be specific, the productivity problems in finance are basically about reduced output caused by loss of demand / market share after the financial crisis rather than what the everyday person would call “lack of productivity”.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Britain has a fantastically competitive supermarket sector.
British food prices are among the lowest in the developed world.
Someone will be along soon to complain about underpaid supermarket workers…
Supermarkets, somewhere else we see recent evidence of staff replaced by computers.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
I think you have just proved my point. Kicking out the beastly furriners will not put up the wages of the low paid, particularly as many of the low paid do not want the jobs that said furriners did.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
Talking to people working in big pubs with lots of tables - they've retained the order-from-table stuff because, on the busy nights it is (a) much more efficient for the staff (b) people start using it, automatically, when they see the queues at the bar have reached 3 deep...
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Yes it is indeed surprising. Perhaps it is the underlying shift to cheaper shops like Lidl that is acting as a disinflationary force here.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Britain has a fantastically competitive supermarket sector.
British food prices are among the lowest in the developed world.
Someone will be along soon to complain about underpaid supermarket workers…
Well the interesting thing there is that the supermarkets with the lowest prices - Aldi & Lidl - have better pay and conditions for their workers, than at the other supermarkets.
Proving that you don't need to immiserate the workers at the bottom of the scale to achieve low prices for consumers with better-paid professional employment and aspirations for early retirement.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Trouble is that the fruit will taste even crappier.
*wonders about moving to a house with a bigger garden*
Try paying a personal fruit picker minimum wage?
We used to do it ourselves in my late father's garden! Not an option now, alas. We hardly buy shop fruit as its taste is so poor by comparison. The farmers will be growing cultivars for long seasons, travelability, and now also machine pickability.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
Not quite. It is 6.2% in the UK and 4.1% in the EU27. Headline CPI is 9.0% in the UK and 8.1% in the EU. The smaller gap in headline CPI is in part because the full effect of higher gas prices is still to come through for the UK (it comes in October). Food inflation is higher in the EU than here, though.
I find it very surprising that food inflation is higher in the EU than in the UK. I would have assumed that our greater dependence on imports would have seen us more exposed to increases in food prices.
Britain has a fantastically competitive supermarket sector.
British food prices are among the lowest in the developed world.
Someone will be along soon to complain about underpaid supermarket workers…
Supermarkets, somewhere else we see recent evidence of staff replaced by computers.
Britain seems to have pioneered those “unexpected item in baggage area” machines DESPITE FOM.
I can’t stand them, I prefer to shop online for groceries.
Another area where, btw, the UK was a pioneer DESPITE FOM.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Really? The guys that do the hand car wash near me charged me £30 today (all furriners I am afraid), whereas the scratchy automatic one owned by poor old BP down the road only costs £5 to strip the top layers of paint off very efficiently.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
I think you have just proved my point. Kicking out the beastly furriners will not put up the wages of the low paid, particularly as many of the low paid do not want the jobs that said furriners did.
Nowhere is “kicking out the beastly furriners”, as you put it.
We should be investing in machines to do the jobs that people don’t want to do, or that can’t be done productively with minimum wage laws in place.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
You're forgetting the very many EU folk who filled in the bumf to become a subject of HMtQ, to keep their options open, but went home anyway.
When did they leave? The only year the ONS estimated there was net EU migration out of the UK was 2020 and that was for 94,000 - in 2021 they estimate it was flat. I can find no source for the claimed half a million people leaving (unless it ignores the ~ half a million people arriving).
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
CBA to read all of that(and I suspect you haven't either unless you have a very dull life), though did notice plenty of ambiguity on my speed read . Fact remains that many EU nationals have left and are discouraged from returning.
Meanwhile net immigration (I guess quite a bit questionable or illegal) continues unabated from RoW. And this was one of the big con tricks of the xenophobic propaganda of Farage et al. The reality was that our government could have done something about 50% of migration from because it was not affected by FoM because it came from RoW. Meanwhile, lots of thickies thought "vote Brexit to keep out immigrants". Reality was the government could have controlled 50% but did FA .
"Fact remains".. yet the ONS statistics show that it is not the case, given that the net migration is near zero.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
I think you have just proved my point. Kicking out the beastly furriners will not put up the wages of the low paid, particularly as many of the low paid do not want the jobs that said furriners did.
Nowhere is “kicking out the beastly furriners”, as you put it.
We should be investing in machines to do the jobs that people don’t want to do, or that can’t be done productively with minimum wage laws in place.
I thought your argument was about it not being a problem if Brexit has caused a labour shortage? That it might increase pay of the lower paid (which is almost certainly dubious)?
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
To be specific, the productivity problems in finance are basically about reduced output caused by loss of demand / market share after the financial crisis rather than what the everyday person would call “lack of productivity”.
There are quite a few banks that still have floors of people doing these kind of jobs - you'd think that automated flows would have been bought in, but no....
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
And yet, every working-age cohort now considers the 2016 decision to have been a mistake. Every region now has "wrong to leave" beating "right to leave".
C2DE respondents are exactly balanced on the question.
The only demographic group in the latest YouGov poll on the matter who think that the UK made the right decision on Brexit are those aged 65+. Either working people are silly, or there are other factors they are considering.
Nobody wants to re-open the decision, sure. Not now. But it increasingly looks like something that matters a lot to the immediate post-war generation that their offspring and their offspring aren't buying into.
Must be all that pro-Brussels brainwashing from 1973 to 2019.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
It all depends what you want to achieve. If the objective is maximising human happiness there are lots of things that could be automated that make people feel less happy. Like all sorts of personal services in hospitality and other spheres.
There is a lot of loneliness in maximal efficiency. Sometimes to replace the person behind the bar with an automatic beer dispenser may be as useful as replacing the customer with an automatic drinker. Happiness can consist in production as well as consumption.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Really? The guys that do the hand car wash near me charged me £30 today (all furriners I am afraid), whereas the scratchy automatic one owned by poor old BP down the road only costs £5 to strip the top layers of paint off very efficiently.
Similarly, I also pay a barista to make me expensive coffee, whereas only 20 years ago I was able to enjoy “instant” granulated weasel shit for tuppence.
It's a bit lower in the EU27 than in the UK but not much lower. Brexit is likely to have led to higher prices in the UK but this a price level effect not something that would push up the rate of inflation indefinitely.
I read somewhere that core inflation in the EU27 (excluding fuel, energy etc.) is currently half that in the UK
You mean, excluding the things that are actually dominating inflation...
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Really? The guys that do the hand car wash near me charged me £30 today (all furriners I am afraid), whereas the scratchy automatic one owned by poor old BP down the road only costs £5 to strip the top layers of paint off very efficiently.
Similarly, I also pay a barista to make me expensive coffee, whereas only 20 years ago I was able to enjoy “instant” granulated weasel shit for tuppence.
Hang on, it's the weasel shite that is the expensive stuff.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Really? The guys that do the hand car wash near me charged me £30 today (all furriners I am afraid), whereas the scratchy automatic one owned by poor old BP down the road only costs £5 to strip the top layers of paint off very efficiently.
Similarly, I also pay a barista to make me expensive coffee, whereas only 20 years ago I was able to enjoy “instant” granulated weasel shit for tuppence.
Hang on, it's the weasel shite that is the expensive stuff.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
At least they no longer do it using pappardelle and penne!
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
You're forgetting the very many EU folk who filled in the bumf to become a subject of HMtQ, to keep their options open, but went home anyway.
When did they leave? The only year the ONS estimated there was net EU migration out of the UK was 2020 and that was for 94,000 - in 2021 they estimate it was flat. I can find no source for the claimed half a million people leaving (unless it ignores the ~ half a million people arriving).
They'll appear on the ONS records as Brits, no? How do they do it, otherwise?
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
When did net half a million people leave these islands?
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
CBA to read all of that(and I suspect you haven't either unless you have a very dull life), though did notice plenty of ambiguity on my speed read . Fact remains that many EU nationals have left and are discouraged from returning.
Meanwhile net immigration (I guess quite a bit questionable or illegal) continues unabated from RoW. And this was one of the big con tricks of the xenophobic propaganda of Farage et al. The reality was that our government could have done something about 50% of migration from because it was not affected by FoM because it came from RoW. Meanwhile, lots of thickies thought "vote Brexit to keep out immigrants". Reality was the government could have controlled 50% but did FA .
"Fact remains".. yet the ONS statistics show that it is not the case, given that the net migration is near zero.
Because of RoW immigration. OK, let me explain a few truths that maybe even a Brexiteer can understand. If you destabilise your workforce by encouraging a large number to "go back to where you came from" it is only the very very lowest skilled jobs that you can put any unskilled person in from, say Somalia, into. Essentially Brexit has caused a destabilisation of the workforce that will take considerable time to correct. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has been a convenient excuse for those few people that still believe there are any "benefits of Brexit" . These tend to be the same people who believe Boris Johnson is an upstanding figure of honesty and probity.
Comments
I was pleasantly surprised it was the much simpler issue of Boris lying.
It’s the same everywhere in the world right now - except perhaps here in Dubai, where there’s never going to be a shortage of Filipinos and Indians willing to work for $300 a month.
If FoM were still a thing, there would be a massive poverty problem among the low paid in the UK right now, with millions of people unable to find even minimum wage work. As it is, businesses are offering substantially higher wages to the lower paid, which offsets the cost of living to an extent the government couldn’t have dreamed about.
A whole bunch of things have probably been too cheap over the last couple of decades because the pay of the people doing the work was driven down. That was not progress.
I’m just noting that wage increases are paid for by everyone eventually, especially those in the non-tradeable (ie non-exporting) sector.
As I said upthread, most economists (but not all) believe that immigration increases wages over time, by increasing firm productivity.
There is also a view that immigrants, by taking lower paid jobs, allow native born workers to move up into high paid positions.
Although that honour may fall to Wales on Sunday, although the Welsh are used to being hated because of their rugby fans.
The real world UK, with EU membership, FoM and a non-contributory benefits system, suggested otherwise.
The theory works in Arabia, where the immigrants will never become citizens, and their visa is tied to their employment. I don’t see anyone advocating a similar system for the UK.
Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood says government should mitigate the cost of living by rejoining the single market (Norway model)
Brexit isn't what "most people imagined" & "sector after sector" is "strangled by the red tape we were supposed to escape from"
https://politicshome.com/thehouse/article/we-can-upgrade-brexit-and-ease-the-cost-of-living-by-going-back-to-the-single-market
https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1532019589349101571
No Boris you are absolutely not indispensable, as your mps are about to demonstrate to you
My own view is that income (and wealth) disparities are obscenely high, but that the way to address this is via a redistributive tax system rather than measures to impede growth.
I see FOM as having been a significant boost to productivity and growth, although I think successive governments made a very bad job of either defending it or ensuring that the most affected communities were profiting thereby.
That the ending of FoM meant the minimum wage became a minimum, rather than a maximum, saw huge pay rises for unskilled British workers.
I also think WFH is really not a good thing. The difference in performance we see in organisations that now WFH compared to 2019 is stark. You cannot get hold of anyone, their policies are not followed and you do not get paid.
WFH for many people means not working.
Transport Scotland: 'Regrettably this decision appears to mean further disruption for passengers in the immediate term given there is no indication that drivers will return to previous Rest Day Working and overtime arrangements,'
UPDATED
Nationalised ScotRail faces months of disruption as train drivers union rejects'final' pay offer
https://twitter.com/heraldscotland/status/1532023572566245378
{levers lid of a case of Chateau de Chassilier}
You were lucky t' have mill owner.....
On a serious note - my theory is that, around the world, the people in the minimum pay jobs are not adventurous, generally. Either for safety, or because the kind of people who work those jobs don't do change. COVID forced them out of these jobs - no shift, no pay.
They found new jobs.
They are sticking with these new jobs, either because they don't want to change again and/or they are better jobs.
Is that a noticeable difference?
Incidentally, the highest inflation rate in the EU is 20%, in Estonia, which suggests that HMG policy of keeping as many Ukrainian refugees out of the UK as possible has been a policy intervention that has succeeded in reducing the extent of the increase in inflation, for all that is been morally lacking.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
You are keen on Google so perhaps take a look yourself.
However, property (to buy and to rent) has been too expensive (in much of the country) = ridiculous money/profits for property developers, estate agents, landlords, inheriters etc.
Q. Why did the lawyer cross the road?
A. I can't tell you for legal reasons!
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
World wide, there is a shortage of highly educated professionals. So if you are a highly paid professional, total FOM has nearly no effect on your wages - the market is failing to clear, very often, despite big wage increases. So a high skilled professional sees only upsides to FOM.
Also, in purely economic terms, it makes sense to have labour priced accurately so that it is used efficiently.
You posted something from Tobias Ellwood and then implied it was false or flawed or stupid or something.
Stick to repeating that line from Stuart Rose.
It will save you having to think much.
Both British and EU net migration are estimated to be close to zero in the year ending June 2021.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/june2021
(And of course, inflation and changes to the minimum wage have a big effect here.)
It is the taboo-est of taboo subjects.
I’m not even an immigration ultra, like @Richard_Tyndall. I might even venture to agree that EU migration was “too high”. Certainly it lacked full democratic consent.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
You certainly didn't see flat wages among the professional classes.
*wonders about moving to a house with a bigger garden*
The answer would appear to be “not really”.
"Those at the top must take responsibility for the culture that is permitted to pervade."
No call for PM to go now but says "systemic change" needed. https://twitter.com/TomLarkinSky/status/1532014280463331328
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
Handwashing is the best.
Meanwhile net immigration (I guess quite a bit questionable or illegal) continues unabated from RoW. And this was one of the big con tricks of the xenophobic propaganda of Farage et al. The reality was that our government could have done something about 50% of migration from because it was not affected by FoM because it came from RoW. Meanwhile, lots of thickies thought "vote Brexit to keep out immigrants". Reality was the government could have controlled 50% but did FA .
British food prices are among the lowest in the developed world.
Someone will be along soon to complain about underpaid supermarket workers…
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
Proving that you don't need to immiserate the workers at the bottom of the scale to achieve low prices for consumers with better-paid professional employment and aspirations for early retirement.
I can’t stand them, I prefer to shop online for groceries.
Another area where, btw, the UK was a pioneer DESPITE FOM.
We should be investing in machines to do the jobs that people don’t want to do, or that can’t be done productively with minimum wage laws in place.
Immigration or, if you prefer, “skilled and controlled” immigration, is one of the most effective ways of addressing this.
I happen to think FOM delivered this pretty bloody efficiently, along with full access to the single market besides.
C2DE respondents are exactly balanced on the question.
The only demographic group in the latest YouGov poll on the matter who think that the UK made the right decision on Brexit are those aged 65+. Either working people are silly, or there are other factors they are considering.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1531982646951165954
Nobody wants to re-open the decision, sure. Not now. But it increasingly looks like something that matters a lot to the immediate post-war generation that their offspring and their offspring aren't buying into.
Must be all that pro-Brussels brainwashing from 1973 to 2019.
There is a lot of loneliness in maximal efficiency. Sometimes to replace the person behind the bar with an automatic beer dispenser may be as useful as replacing the customer with an automatic drinker. Happiness can consist in production as well as consumption.
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1531988252760195073