Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

OJ Simpson can’t win here! – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,221
edited April 28 in General
OJ Simpson can’t win here! – politicalbetting.com

I had forgotten my favourite OJ Simpson fact (probably my favourite fact), OJ Simpson was a sprinter before becoming an American footballer, he took part in a race in 1967 won by a British athlete who ran under 10.2s for the second time that year That athlete, Ming Campbell

Read the full story here

«1345

Comments

  • StarryStarry Posts: 111
    First. Just like Israel's attack on sovereign land
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,040
    Damn, I have already done my Ming story.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,072
    Meh, getting away with murdering two people is more interesting IMHO
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Sharon, with all due respect, that murderer ran for over 11,000 yards"

    Dave Chappelle telling the stories of the four different times he met OJ Simpson is absolutely worth your time today.


    https://x.com/mattdizwhitlock/status/1778535760343506969?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 124,095
    CatMan said:

    Meh, getting away with murdering two people is more interesting IMHO

    He lost the civil action even if he was found not guilty in the criminal case
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228
    a

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    I see the private system is providing extra capacity at an average cost of £150 000 per year.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/13/vulnerable-children-illegal-unregulated-care-homes-england

    Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin

    Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...

    CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.

    https://twitter.com/MartinBarrow/status/1772328757124038730
    It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.

    I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.

    Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)

    NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k

    Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
    Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.

    That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
    Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?

    24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
    I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
    In the case of the Cotswolds care home, it was being run by the council. Plans lodged and shown to the community included space for 24/7 staff. And a commitment in the costing for the same.

    So either they are conducting an expensive and public lie or…

    This is a function of the laws and precedent in the area. Consider, at the enquiry into something going wrong -

    “You had, under the legal regulations and best practise, to provide 24/7 staff. But you planned not to”

    “Errrrrr….”

    Something that needs to be understood - this works a bit like American health care. If you provide all the facilities, someone else pays and you are legally bulletproof.

    Another thing. On a cost plus contract, profit is typically a percentage of spend. So if you legitimately spend £200k looking after a child, this is better than spending £100k.

  • BatteryCorrectHorseBatteryCorrectHorse Posts: 4,092
    edited April 14
    Just popped down to Tesco for my meal deal.

    The Prime Minister reminded me: "don't forget to scan your Clubcard!"
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,640
    Liverpool season over
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,234

    Liverpool season over

    West Ham fading fast too.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,951
    DavidL said:

    Damn, I have already done my Ming story.

    Repeat it. It doesn't stop most of us saying the same thing over and over again.
  • StarryStarry Posts: 111

    Liverpool season over

    All to play for the for Scottish title and the relegation/promotion playoffs in both the SPFL and Scottish Championship though. Amazing result for Ross County, whilst it's anyone, apart from Arbroath, on the lower half of the SC for the Division One playoffs. The Championship has always been a fascinating division to follow.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,640
    Foxy said:

    Liverpool season over

    West Ham fading fast too.
    West Ham unlikely to finish top 7 now so no European football for them next season. Overall they have still done well under Moyes with a European trophy.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,485
    LFC keep going behind all season.
    It was bound to come to pass eventually.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,485

    Just popped down to Tesco for my meal deal.

    The Prime Minister reminded me: "don't forget to scan your Clubcard!"

    Of at least some utility then.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,640
    All eyes on the exciting Championship promotion and relegation! Nothing decided yet!! Watford not safe yet!!!
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,928
    Can a constitution expert opine - regarding the story I posted earlier about the Government spending £50bn on the Bank of England's losses this year, does that not play into Barnett consequentials? Should the devolved authorities be getting a pile of extra money given to them so they can piss it away in a devolved manner?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,109

    Liverpool season over

    ...
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,958
    edited April 14
    FPT - @MustaphaMondeo

    Under FPTP Labour are going to get 80% of the representation with 47% of the vote. So why are the Tories not bringing in PR?

    I mean if your choice is huge Labour majority or about 47% Labour, why choose to lose everything?

    I don’t agree with the Tories about much (anything) but their supporters deserve a proportional voice.
    Making changes to the electoral system for partisan reasons is a very bad idea and not something we should encourage, even if it might occasionally match our preferences for electoral reform.

    In any case, both parties in the duopoly will fight to hang on to FPTP for the times that it gives them a majority of seats on a minority of the votes, and because it completely crushes the prospects of any other party that would seek to challenge the duopoly - minor regional parties aside.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228
    kjh said:

    DavidL said:

    Damn, I have already done my Ming story.

    Repeat it. It doesn't stop most of us saying the same thing over and over again.
    But was he merciless?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,040
    Omnium said:

    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.

    He ran at the Olympics for the UK in 1964 I think and held the UK record for 100m for a large period of times, until 1974, I think.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,779
    Omnium said:

    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.

    Those were the days. When politicians had really done things before entering politics.

    image
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,774
    The Juice got away with it but Ming got away from the Juice
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,747
    HYUFD said:

    CatMan said:

    Meh, getting away with murdering two people is more interesting IMHO

    He lost the civil action even if he was found not guilty in the criminal case
    Didn't cough up though.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 52,333
    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,981
    Omnium said:

    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.

    We mentioned it a lot on here when Ming Campbell was leader of the LDs.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919

    Can a constitution expert opine - regarding the story I posted earlier about the Government spending £50bn on the Bank of England's losses this year, does that not play into Barnett consequentials? Should the devolved authorities be getting a pile of extra money given to them so they can piss it away in a devolved manner?

    BoE is by any other name the government. I'm no fan of the BoE being enabled to create such swings. It needs to be funded.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    Andy_JS said:

    Omnium said:

    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.

    We mentioned it a lot on here when Ming Campbell was leader of the LDs.
    Well I guess I just didn't register it, or took it as an allusion to something that I didn't know about. I've been on PB a long time, and one day I plan to make a good post.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,072

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    I don't think he was a pole vaulter
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,640

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Maybe they would be running away with it in the polls?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Maybe they would be running away with it in the polls?
    It's all Ovett for your posting career.
  • isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,234
    CatMan said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    I don't think he was a pole vaulter
    I reckon he would be for the high jump. Discus...
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,483
    Omnium said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Maybe they would be running away with it in the polls?
    It's all Ovett for your posting career.
    How many more puns can we Cram into this conversation?

    (Serious answer- maybe right man, but wrong time; he's 67 now.)
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 52,333
    Foxy said:

    CatMan said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    I don't think he was a pole vaulter
    I reckon he would be for the high jump. Discus...
    He would guarantee to protect the triple jump.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,234

    Omnium said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Maybe they would be running away with it in the polls?
    It's all Ovett for your posting career.
    How many more puns can we Cram into this conversation?

    (Serious answer- maybe right man, but wrong time; he's 67 now.)
    I would have a further attempt but Moscow and cut the lawn.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,774
    Foxy said:

    CatMan said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    I don't think he was a pole vaulter
    I reckon he would be for the high jump. Discus...
    Vanilla's bad enough

  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,431

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Behind Labour leader Steve Ovett.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 124,095

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,746
    Andy_JS said:

    Omnium said:

    I didn't have the slightest idea that Ming Campbell had such an outstanding athletic past.

    We mentioned it a lot on here when Ming Campbell was leader of the LDs.
    He was the “fastest white man on the planet” at one point. It did for his knees though; massive taxi bills for short distances which caused his expenses to be questioned at one time.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    He seems to have flourished as the chief Olympic honcho - or whatever he is. When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why). I am less convinced of his good bones these days.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 14,095
    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    I'd say winning F&C in 1992 was a bigger win than losing it in 1997 was! F&C was probably the Tories weakest seat in Cornwall at the time - holding in in 97 would have been astonishing.

    But still, it would be a high bar to have been as good a politician as he was an athlete.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,431
    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 120,011
    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    Pah.

    Coe’s a Sheffield lad with a dash of Indian subcontinent heritage.

    You cannot get more working class than that.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,483
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    I'd say winning F&C in 1992 was a bigger win than losing it in 1997 was! F&C was probably the Tories weakest seat in Cornwall at the time - holding in in 97 would have been astonishing.

    But still, it would be a high bar to have been as good a politician as he was an athlete.
    One of the paradoxes of FPTP. To win a marginal, you have to be good at connecting with the whole constituency, and you have to keep on your toes because you're never wholly safe. To win a safe seat, you have to keep your activists reasonably happy, but otherwise you can be a donkey that they pin the appropriate rosette to.

    It's not an absolute rule (John Major was loved by pretty much everyone in Huntingdon), but it is an issue.

    Coughrishisunakcough.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    The Israelis will basically ask the UN to declare a limited war on Iran tonight. The UN will never do so. Jordan becomes incredibly important all of a sudden.

    Iran, Iran - the home of the stupidest politicians on the planet. Perhaps too the home of the nicest people. Iran Stupid will win, and we'll all lose somewhat.

  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

  • In the village pub where I'm from in Hampshire, they now don't open on certain days because they simply can't get the staff. This never used to be an issue.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,951
    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    He seems to have flourished as the chief Olympic honcho - or whatever he is. When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why). I am less convinced of his good bones these days.
    He does. It is definitely the job for him.

    Re the Coe/Ovett impression in the public's mind I think it was how they presented themselves. Coe cultivated a public image, Ovett didn't really care. However in reality I think the roles were reversed as to who was the more gracious person. I think that could be seen in the 800/1500m races. Ovett was definitely the more sportsman like of the two at the end of each race.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,716
    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    But Ovett came from leafy Tory Brighton on the Sussex coast while Coe came from some northern industrial town, so how does that work?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,981
    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672
    edited April 14

    In the village pub where I'm from in Hampshire, they now don't open on certain days because they simply can't get the staff. This never used to be an issue.

    Yep - as I say in my post, it's a similar picture in Sidmouth. No-one wins from where we have arrived at.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,948

    In the village pub where I'm from in Hampshire, they now don't open on certain days because they simply can't get the staff. This never used to be an issue.

    Yep - no-one wins from where we have arrived at.
    It's the same in a few locals where we are in West Wales.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,431
    edited April 14

    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    Pah.

    Coe’s a Sheffield lad with a dash of Indian subcontinent heritage.

    You cannot get more working class than that.
    Yes, but he was polite, handsome, well spoken and had good hair and teeth. In the 1980s he was virtually Brideshead Revisited.

    In comparison Ovett was gangly, hollow-cheeked, balding and had no tooth that lined up with another.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,003

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    Hammer-ed...
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    The door down the passage and to the left.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,538
    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    Cambourne did not exist in 1992!

    I think you mean Camborne... ;)

    (pedants r us)
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,928
    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    Tim Henman was never in serious competition with Andy Murray - it was Greg Ruzedski (sp?) who was his UK tennis rival, not that I recall much rivalry.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672
    Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,350
    edited April 14
    UK swapped to fatal US blood products to save money, minutes suggest
    Exclusive: contaminated blood campaigners say internal 1976 Immuno AG document proves British government negligence

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/14/contaminated-blood-inquiry-uk-cheaper-minutes
    The British government was willing to risk infecting NHS patients to get “lower-priced” blood products, according to a document that campaigners claim proves state and corporate guilt in one of the country’s worst ever scandals.

    A public inquiry into the deaths of an estimated 2,900 people infected with conditions such as HIV and hepatitis will publish its final report in May, four decades after the NHS started prescribing blood and blood products – including from drug users, prisoners and sex workers – sourced from the US...

    ...In November 1976, Immuno AG, an Austrian company that was a major supplier to the Department of Health, was seeking a licence change to allow it to supply a blood product from those paid to donate in the US rather than donors without a financial incentive in Europe.

    According to the minutes of a meeting of medics in the company, it had been “proven” that there was a “significantly higher hepatitis risk” from a concentrate known as Kryobulin 2 made from US plasma compared with that from Austria and Germany...

    ...Evidence has been heard at the inquiry of government documents going missing. There was a policy in the 1970s and 80s of not informing the victims who had been infected.

    In France, senior officials went to jail in the 1990s over a similar scandal, but there has never been a prosecution in the UK...

  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,928
    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Despicable. Real enemies of the people stuff. Makes one shudder.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,431

    viewcode said:

    Omnium said:

    HYUFD said:

    How would the Tories be polling with Seb Coe as leader?

    He won Falmouth and Cambourne in 1992 but lost it in 1997 and was a key adviser to Hague before he lost by a landslide in 2001.

    Coe was certainly a better athlete than politician
    ...When he was running he was portrayed as the clean guy, Ovett as the rotter (lord knows why)..
    Welcome to the class structure of the United Kingdom. Ovett was coded as the rangy scrappy working-class tuff, Coe as the clean-faced handsome young man that middle-class families shovel their daughters at. Ovett was supposed to come second behind Coe. He declined and was instantly recast as the bad guy. See also Tim Henman vs Andy Murray.

    Tim Henman was never in serious competition with Andy Murray - it was Greg Ruzedski (sp?) who was his UK tennis rival, not that I recall much rivalry.
    The fact that I am wrong should not get in the way of my point. It makes things so much simpler, I find. :smiley:
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    My family has a long connection with the parks of London.

    If you walk in Regent's Park today you see lots of (in order of numbers) Muslim women, tourists, and that's it.

    There's very little sign of English people (ex the Muslim Women who are).

    We've all done the sexual equality road, but WTF are Muslim women doing!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,350
    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Which are the periods of genuinely good government since the war ?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Which are the periods of genuinely good government since the war ?
    Thatcher. Perhaps the first year or so of Blair.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,350
    STEPHANOPOULOS: Just to sum up. You support Trump for president even if he's convicted in the classified documents case. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about the last election. You support him for president even if he's convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?

    SUNUNU: Yeah. Me and 51 percent of America.

    S: Governor, thanks for your time this morning.

    https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1779529741579542854
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,774
    Omnium said:

    My family has a long connection with the parks of London.

    If you walk in Regent's Park today you see lots of (in order of numbers) Muslim women, tourists, and that's it.

    There's very little sign of English people (ex the Muslim Women who are).

    We've all done the sexual equality road, but WTF are Muslim women doing!

    That's a coicidence. My father worked for the Royal Parks in Regents Park. That was in the 1960s.

  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,919
    geoffw said:

    Omnium said:

    My family has a long connection with the parks of London.

    If you walk in Regent's Park today you see lots of (in order of numbers) Muslim women, tourists, and that's it.

    There's very little sign of English people (ex the Muslim Women who are).

    We've all done the sexual equality road, but WTF are Muslim women doing!

    That's a coicidence. My father worked for the Royal Parks in Regents Park. That was in the 1960s.

    My family much before that - in the 19th century.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,992
    edited April 14
    FPT (I'm back):

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    TOPPING said:

    FF43 said:

    TOPPING said:

    For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.

    According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
    Yes that's my point
    Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.

    She may be lying I suppose.
    It’s not the quantum.

    If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
    Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
    My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
    On a parallel to this point, remember that in the 2010 expenses scandal it became known, for example, iirc that Mr & Mrs Balls had had their primary residence for tax purposes at different addresses.

    It had to do with "optimising" mortgages, and was help not be unacceptable, as the rules in force did not ban it. But imo this was unquestionably manipulation of the expenses system for personal gain.

    Married couple and Labour Cabinet ministers Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper were accused in September 2007 of exploiting the Commons' allowances system in order to pay for a £655,000 house in London. The complaint, centering on the gain made by allocation of their 'second house', was dismissed since it was held the couple had acted in accordance with parliamentary rules.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal#:~:text=The committee recommended that Spelman,£655,000 house in London.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,350
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Which are the periods of genuinely good government since the war ?
    Thatcher. Perhaps the first year or so of Blair.
    As I’ve noted before, Thatcher did some real long term harm alongside the good - notably to local government and housing.
    And water privatisation.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,686

    FPT - @MustaphaMondeo


    Under FPTP Labour are going to get 80% of the representation with 47% of the vote. So why are the Tories not bringing in PR?

    I mean if your choice is huge Labour majority or about 47% Labour, why choose to lose everything?

    I don’t agree with the Tories about much (anything) but their supporters deserve a proportional voice.
    Making changes to the electoral system for partisan reasons is a very bad idea and not something we should encourage, even if it might occasionally match our preferences for electoral reform.

    In any case, both parties in the duopoly will fight to hang on to FPTP for the times that it gives them a majority of seats on a minority of the votes, and because it completely crushes the prospects of any other party that would seek to challenge the duopoly - minor regional parties aside.
    Not making changes to the electoral system for partisan reasons is also a very bad idea.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Which are the periods of genuinely good government since the war ?
    Thatcher. Perhaps the first year or so of Blair.
    It is of interest to inform Thatcher haters of some of the things she actually did.

    The mind boggling ideas of actually trying to prevent people creating jobs (above) was part of a whole raft of ideas that were binned.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,001

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
  • What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?

    I cannot see how local pubs outside of the cities survive in this climate. They're expensive so people don't go and they don't enough staff so they can't open.

    It's really sad as a lot of these places have been around for hundreds of years.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,350

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    One of my favourite subjects — how the British government felt threatened by the success of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s, and actually did everything it could to downgrade their economies.

    https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-curse-of-being-first/comments

    "Worse still, similar discriminatory policies were also enacted against the Midlands, especially the industrial centres of Birmingham, Coventry, and Leicester, as detailed in John Myers’s excellent ‘The Plot Against Mercia’:

    The national government saw the success of the Midlands as damaging other regions. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945 sought to stop industrial growth in the ‘Congested Areas’ — the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East — and to push industry to declining ‘Development Areas’ in the North and West. Entrepreneurs had to get an ‘Industrial Development Certificate’ (IDC) before building a new factory…

    The 1956 West Midlands Plan… set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink…

    Those requirements blocked most post-war growth in Midlands factories. But for 20 years, there was no limit on service businesses, and so Midlands entrepreneurs turned to those; despite the planning madness, the Midlands flourished… but in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth ‘threatening’, and banned further office development for almost two decades."

    Which are the periods of genuinely good government since the war ?
    Thatcher. Perhaps the first year or so of Blair.
    It is of interest to inform Thatcher haters of some of the things she actually did.

    The mind boggling ideas of actually trying to prevent people creating jobs (above) was part of a whole raft of ideas that were binned.
    Above average for her first two terms, though there’ll always be arguments over her divisiveness; third term not good.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited April 14

    Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.

    The beauty of leaving is we can now, or in the future, offer those young people the chance to do that, whilst preventing the mass immigration of low paid workers and tradesmen that left a deep footprint, put breadwinners out of work, or pressure on their wages & job security, whose kids took up school places etc

    If that had been an option while we were a member I doubt Leave would have won
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,981

    In the village pub where I'm from in Hampshire, they now don't open on certain days because they simply can't get the staff. This never used to be an issue.

    Hampshire is too posh for me.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,046
    edited April 14

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.

    Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.

    Throwing immigration at the problem, which leads to further pressure on housing and transport (although many of them are nice enough to bunk up so don’t take a whole room each), isn’t the solution to the problem.
  • DonkeysDonkeys Posts: 723
    Omnium said:

    My family has a long connection with the parks of London.

    If you walk in Regent's Park today you see lots of (in order of numbers) Muslim women, tourists, and that's it.

    There's very little sign of English people (ex the Muslim Women who are).

    We've all done the sexual equality road, but WTF are Muslim women doing!

    They're talking about you, Omnium. They're going to come round and kill you later.
    Either that, or they're having a nice time in the park.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,592
    stodge said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
    And yet when South Cambridgeshire council tried to fix the problem with a 4 day week it was stamped upon immediately..
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 1,162
    stodge said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
    Cambridge county council is attempting to address that by offering a four day week -- effectively saying "we can't compete with the private sector on headline salary but we can offer this big perk (and effectively higher hourly wage)".
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,431
    isam said:

    Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.

    The beauty of leaving is we can now, or in the future, offer those young people the chance to do that, whilst preventing the mass immigration of low paid workers and tradesmen that left a deep footprint, put breadwinners out of work, or pressure on their wages & job security, whose kids took up school places etc

    If that had been an option while we were a member I doubt Leave would have won
    ...as Lynton Crosby pointed out before the referendum IIRC
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,061

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Lets see who benefits from keeping waiters on min wage

    People who go to restaurants because prices are lower
    People who run restaurants because overheads are lower

    People who don't benefit....waiters who end up on min wage and probably can't afford to eat often if at all at those restaurants

    ie It benefits the middle classes and screw the lower paid.

    As a not I am not far from sidmouth just up the coast a little at don't see all these closing restaurants, cafes and pubs in either budleigh salterton or exmouth due to staff shortages. What I do see is closures of places because they no longer get enough throughput of customers because a lot of people that could afford to goto bars 3 to 4 times a week now can't.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672
    isam said:

    Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.

    The beauty of leaving is we can now, or in the future, offer those young people the chance to do that, whilst preventing the mass immigration of low paid workers and tradesmen that left a deep footprint, put breadwinners out of work, or pressure on their wages & job security, whose kids took up school places etc

    If that had been an option while we were a member I doubt Leave would have won

    If the restaurants and pubs and bars are gone, there are no jobs to offer. That's the problem.

  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228
    Sandpit said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.

    Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
    Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.

    Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.

    Strangely he has staff.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 1,162

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?

    I cannot see how local pubs outside of the cities survive in this climate. They're expensive so people don't go and they don't enough staff so they can't open.

    It's really sad as a lot of these places have been around for hundreds of years.
    I'm reminded of the way stately homes became simply uneconomic in their original setup at the beginning of the twentieth century, as the cost of labour rose and it wasn't possible to have a massive live in staff supporting the running of the estate any more. Perhaps some pubs too will survive by becoming tourist attractions, with volunteer reenactors playing the part of the locals and signboards explaining traditions like "buying a round". Don't forget to buy the souvenir pint glass in the gift shop on your way out...
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,001
    pm215 said:

    stodge said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
    Cambridge county council is attempting to address that by offering a four day week -- effectively saying "we can't compete with the private sector on headline salary but we can offer this big perk (and effectively higher hourly wage)".
    When South Cambridgeshire tried to do this they were slapped down by Michael Gove and other Conservative Ministers who clearly despise the public sector and think no one is doing any work. We see the same from Jacob Rees-Mogg and his infantile bleating about civil servants.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?

    Why would anyone want to wait tables? To earn some money while improving their English so that they can go home and get a well paid job and build a life.

    We had - we have - a brilliant selling point. The English language. It's one that enabled eating out, going out generally, to become cheaper and more available to many more people. It created businesses, it helped local economies, it generated business rates. There were no real losers. We were mad to so casually throw it away. As I say, this is not about Brexit per se, it's about the Brexit that was chosen.

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,046
    edited April 14

    Sandpit said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.

    Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
    Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.

    Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.

    Strangely he has staff.
    Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!

    Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,672
    Pagan2 said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Lets see who benefits from keeping waiters on min wage

    People who go to restaurants because prices are lower
    People who run restaurants because overheads are lower

    People who don't benefit....waiters who end up on min wage and probably can't afford to eat often if at all at those restaurants

    ie It benefits the middle classes and screw the lower paid.

    As a not I am not far from sidmouth just up the coast a little at don't see all these closing restaurants, cafes and pubs in either budleigh salterton or exmouth due to staff shortages. What I do see is closures of places because they no longer get enough throughput of customers because a lot of people that could afford to goto bars 3 to 4 times a week now can't.

    It's not just middle class people that eat out and go to pubs.

  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?

    Why would anyone want to wait tables? To earn some money while improving their English so that they can go home and get a well paid job and build a life.

    We had - we have - a brilliant selling point. The English language. It's one that enabled eating out, going out generally, to become cheaper and more available to many more people. It created businesses, it helped local economies, it generated business rates. There were no real losers. We were mad to so casually throw it away. As I say, this is not about Brexit per se, it's about the Brexit that was chosen.

    Judging by the people I meet, working in other trades, they are still here. Just not waiting on tables.

    Why opt for the shitiest job when there is much nicer work available?
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    isam said:

    Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.

    The beauty of leaving is we can now, or in the future, offer those young people the chance to do that, whilst preventing the mass immigration of low paid workers and tradesmen that left a deep footprint, put breadwinners out of work, or pressure on their wages & job security, whose kids took up school places etc

    If that had been an option while we were a member I doubt Leave would have won

    If the restaurants and pubs and bars are gone, there are no jobs to offer. That's the problem.

    Pubs have been closing down for years now, I don’t think it’s because they can’t get the staff. It’s a shame if restaurants are closing because of the reason you give, but the situation can be remedied

    Unfortunately, Blair’s decision to open the floodgates to the A8 and the refusal by him, then Cameron, to listen to the people affected meant we had to bludgeon our way out. Finesse was not an option, I wish it had been
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,992
    MattW said:
    Heh. There's a video of a launch going round in circles and suddenly stopping, and apparently no hot-pursuit agreement.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y31UR6wLi5Y
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,228
    pm215 said:

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?

    I cannot see how local pubs outside of the cities survive in this climate. They're expensive so people don't go and they don't enough staff so they can't open.

    It's really sad as a lot of these places have been around for hundreds of years.
    I'm reminded of the way stately homes became simply uneconomic in their original setup at the beginning of the twentieth century, as the cost of labour rose and it wasn't possible to have a massive live in staff supporting the running of the estate any more. Perhaps some pubs too will survive by becoming tourist attractions, with volunteer reenactors playing the part of the locals and signboards explaining traditions like "buying a round". Don't forget to buy the souvenir pint glass in the gift shop on your way out...
    Perhaps we could pay the Libyan Coastguard for some of their stock of Africans? I understand they can be err.., incentivised to work for low, low rates.

    Isn’t this how you get a statue put up in your honour?
  • Andy_JS said:

    In the village pub where I'm from in Hampshire, they now don't open on certain days because they simply can't get the staff. This never used to be an issue.

    Hampshire is too posh for me.
    Depends where you go in Hampshire, I'm from a posh but very down to Earth area. Saying it's all posh isn't really true.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,061

    Pagan2 said:

    isam said:

    WillG said:

    isam said:

    If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit

    It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.

    So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
    Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
    You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause

    Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.

    But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.

    I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.

    (Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
    80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
    Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.

    The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.

    We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
    I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
    But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
    Yes I suppose so.
    But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
    They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
    Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.

    It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
    Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.

    If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?

    No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.

    What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.

    The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.

    Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.

    Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
    Lets see who benefits from keeping waiters on min wage

    People who go to restaurants because prices are lower
    People who run restaurants because overheads are lower

    People who don't benefit....waiters who end up on min wage and probably can't afford to eat often if at all at those restaurants

    ie It benefits the middle classes and screw the lower paid.

    As a not I am not far from sidmouth just up the coast a little at don't see all these closing restaurants, cafes and pubs in either budleigh salterton or exmouth due to staff shortages. What I do see is closures of places because they no longer get enough throughput of customers because a lot of people that could afford to goto bars 3 to 4 times a week now can't.

    It's not just middle class people that eat out and go to pubs.

    I didn't say it was, I said most min wage people cant afford to it often
This discussion has been closed.