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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Five CON holds & a gain + one LAB hold in this week’s local by-elections
Hartside on Eden (Con defence) Result: Con 175 (53% -4% on last time) , Ind 98 (30% -13% on last time) , Green 58 (18%, no candidate last time) Conservative HOLD with a majority of 77 (13%) on a swing of 4.5% from Ind to Con
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Edit: And top spot on the PB Olympic podium for me!
Mr. Rentool, there was a plan by Ecclestone to have gold medals for winning F1 races, with most wins over a season taking the title. Thankfully it never happened.
Edited extra bit: same day as the Italian election, incidentally.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/09/lack-of-migrant-workers-left-food-rotting-in-uk-fields-last-year-data-reveals
"The Tophill results are very unusual in that the Conservatives did better (relative to Labour) than the county elections last May - 873 votes to Labour's 710, whereas it was 995-923 in the county division contiguous with the two wards (Greens were the only other candidates in all cases). There was a sitting Labour councillor last year though, and the new Conservative councillor for Tophill West is the county council member."
http://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/10932/local-elections-february-8th-2018?page=5&scrollTo=610253
There is a catch in that, however. There is no such thing as a normal year. We have this unknown factor in Agriculture, the weather. Soft fruit is especially sensitive to weather. Getting labour where and when you want it has always proved a challenge. I would be shocked to find any year going by without waste. Without wishing to cast aspersion on anyone, there is a lot of scope to use statistics to illustrate the point you want highlighted.
Edit. Actually probably could have, having googled.
Whilst the detail of the report is challengeable, the point is not. There will be a labour shortage for labour-intensive parts of the agriculture industry, fruit and veg picking being a good example.
For too long the industry has been dependent on seasonal workers, on pay that only makes sense if you shuttle between countries such that you save in England and spend in (mainly) Eastern Europe. That was an unsustainable arbitrage, Brexit or no Brexit.
It encouraged a number of satellite problems to develop, including cramped, "temporary" housing, gangmasters, and an almost invisible workforce. Tuberculosis made a return to rural areas. It stifled technology. It drove an idea that immigration was not high, but uncontrolled.
The result, in terms of food cost, has been entirely internalised, such that the public would now see £1 cucumbers as expensive, rather than the 50p existing cucumbers very cheap.
It must end and I hope that we take this opportunity, even it means temporary pain.
All sorts of interesting bits in here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18490749 (although it dates to 2012):
eg
In 2006, as a result of complaints led by Polish growers, a 34.2% tariff was implemented by the EU on frozen Chinese strawberries.
and
Despite a 45% increase in production in the UK with 4,969 hectares of strawberries grown in 2011, Britain still relies on imports from Spain, Israel, Morocco, Egypt to meet growing consumer demand for fresh berries for the rest of the year.
Twenty years ago British strawberry season lasted for six weeks, but now it runs for six months, says Laurence Olins.
Now 90% of British crops are now grown in polytunnels, safeguarding what was previously seen as an unreliable crop due to its poor tolerance of disease and bad weather.
However with the reduction in the range of fungicides available, growing Strawberries in a cool humid environment is more challenging than a few years ago.
Asking the youth of today to be where there’s no 4G signal is akin to torture.
However, it is an international issue.
California couldn't produce food without Mexican labour for example.
UK requires cheaper EU labour. If you go back to the 1960s pre EEC there were lots of Italians employed in the sector.
The real dichotomy is between Rich country and Poor(er) countries. In the rich country your expectations are higher. Comfort, regular employment, a higher standard of living etc. The indigenous population of a rich country will inevitably attract poorer people to do the unpopular and menial tasks. This applies to immigration here from the 1950s onwards, in Australia it happens, in USA it happens, it even happens in Poland where imported labour fills in at the bottom of the scale filling the places vacated by the Polish labour emigrating elsewhere.
Probably there are two ways to end it. Minimum wage of 25k pa or equivalent or banning immigration.
Both are not practical.
My worst ever job working on the land? Being dropped off by the van to pick sprout stalks out of pig-shit. Sandwiches to eat at midday and the nearest washing facilities about three miles away. Fortunately, you lose your sense of smell after a few minutes.
Mind you, this was the 1960s. European immigrants? Pah! They don't know they're born. And as for those four Yorkshiremen ... luxury.
https://twitter.com/STVNews/status/961996223111663616
The world's weirdest pizza toppings for National Pizza Day
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/mac-n-cheese-brussels-sprouts-worlds-controversial-pizzas/
"Come now David. Why would a Brexiteer be concerned that some of our farms are staffed almost entirely with poorly-paid Slavs? Don’t you just want to kick them all out?"
Coming over here and working long hours for low wages. I understand why the farmers approve, but why would the Labour Party? Weren't they fans of the Tolpuddle martyrs? Local agricultural labourers wanting to put up the price of food by earning more.
Or are they the locals the wrong sort of land workers?
However, for those where the work is full time, very few companies involved in field work in Horticulture / Agriculture can recruit UK born labourers. College educated in the subject in non labourer posts,yes.
Place an advert in the Midlands for employees as labourers and don't expect many responses. Even if the rewards are above the industry averages, you won't get inundated with applications.
(It would be interesting to compare with similar stages in other electoral cycles, e.g. 2011, 2006, 2002, 1998 etc. How were the parties doing in local elections six to nine months after a GE?
If we fully accepted guest workers as part of our ecomomy, made it as easy as possible for them to come here to work but at the same time clamped down properly on gang masters and on employers who circumvent rules for he sake of cut price labour then I would be very hard pressed to think of a valid reason for objecting to their presence
It’s sad you thought it was genuine though
Worry not. (Although, your bank might.....)
http://www.tiffany.co.uk/accessories/tiffany-leather-collection/passport-cover-GRP09836?fromGrid=1&origin=browse&trackpdp=bg&tracktile=new&fromcid=3782005&trackgridpos=112
"but at the same time clamped down properly on gang masters "
It must be those dastardly foreign gangers nowadays.
I worked on the land from 1963 to 1967 during my school holidays at Easter and Summer, and at night after school from early April onwards. Driven to the field by the local ganger. He was even there picking those shitty sprout stems along with his teenage son.
To be fair to him, that was a one-off job. The idiot farmer hadn't allowed enough time for the composting to work before spreading it.
Finest produce of N16, yer kebab, innit?
"British youth are too often jot willing to actually work for a living and they are rewarded for that through our social security system."
There may be truth in that, but if I were sixteen again and presented with modern days options now, I might be tempted to look elsewhere too.
Says he, trying not to sound like an old git ... "Them young 'uns, don't know they're born nowadays."
Having been refused, it does seem an error though to start a timer running when you’re not ready.
Why did May do that? Because the Brexiteers were impatient and wanted to get on with it!
That'll larn 'em!
I don’t recall them being in a rush to get a50 announced.
It is all part of the underlying problem in the UK that we have moved from pushing equality of opportunity to pushing equality of outcomes. We no longer tell kids that evetyyone should have the same opportunities. We now tell them that everyone should have the same rewards. So no one wants to be a bus driver or a bin man. No one wants to spend the summer picking fruit when they can spend it on an internship or a gap year holiday. Not every one can be a computer game designer and the sooner they realise that the better
Apologies for the sweeping statements. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyome. But it does apply to a significant number of people.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604303/apple-picking-robot-prepares-to-compete-for-farm-jobs/
https://global.handelsblatt.com/opinion/angela-merkel-declares-victory-surrenders-885270
"Germans, however, have already seen enough. They are somewhere between bored, disappointed and horrified. The document that seals the third “grand coalition” (sic) under Angela Merkel as chancellor is as long on waffle as it is short on substance. Its only message is that the negotiators haggled with one objective: to get themselves into plum jobs and their rivals into retirement.
One hardly knows whom to blame most, but Ms. Merkel deserves to go first. In her thirteenth year in power, she looks exhausted, and bewildered that her alleged tactical aplomb has of late fallen flat. "
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-07/china-cautious-on-pre-brexit-trade-talks-with-u-k-envoy-says
(£10 at 5-1 on Corbyn becoming PM within 6 months of the next General Election)
No worries either way.
Edit: Companies Act 2006: When a company is dissolved, all property and rights whatsoever vested in or held on trust for the company immediately before its dissolution (including leasehold property, but not including property held by the company on trust for another person) are deemed to be bona vacantia
I think that this is asset values recalibrating to a world where interest rates will not be on the floor indefinitely but it seems out of step with the glowing international picture that is currently being painted.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/09/lack-of-migrant-workers-left-food-rotting-in-uk-fields-last-year-data-reveals
It seems that not enough Romanians want to work hard enough for low enough wages in bad enough conditions.
The idea that better pay and conditions might attract more workers does not seem to have occurred. But then the idea of better pay and conditions for the rural working class appears to be anathema to metropolitan leftists. I suspect that the average Guardian journalist would think that the Tolpuddle Martyrs got off too lightly.
Apparently the UK is on the brink of starvation because there were 4,300 job vacancies in the agricultural sector last year.
That's about 1% of the total agricultural workforce.
Alternatively those agricultural job vacancies were about 5% of the number of 18-24 year olds who had been unemployed for more than a year or about 1% of the number of unemployed immigrants.
With eastern England now resembling the Ukraine in 1933 perhaps we need to look at drastic measures.