It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I see that Rishi’s budget has unraveled already. A mix of wildly optimistic economic assumptions and spending figures that imply, for a majority of government departments, Austerity redux, and even then he only gets the deficit back to where it was.
Despite all his emphasis on being honest with people about the challenge ahead, he’s been dishonest, hiding the cuts that are implicit in his forward spending plans and ducking all the big decisions that should have been taken about the future financing of public services.
Sorry, which parallel Universe are you in at the moment? Is it the one where Rishi's speech was written by @contrarian and involved 30% cuts across the board along with a cut in IT to stimulate demand (amongst the most wealthy)? Because that's not the one where most of us are right now.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
I think the header is excellent and Labour should do all these things. But I think even if so, they would still be behind.
A lot of people like the Tories, that's just how it is. I can respect that unlike a lot of the nutters on Twitter.
Labours saving grace, at least to me, is obvious.
Ed Balls.
Now a well known media "celebrity" and actually quite well liked. He's shown himself to be human. Which negates a lot of what Boris has. Just sayin'
In the meantime, it would be good to re-build the SC. The talent is not great but why is Cooper not in there for instance?
Cooper is experienced but she's too...."headmistressy"...she always sounds and looks patronising, she appears like she's always explaining something to a five year-old.
And she has a trait common, almost universal in the PLP. The inability to...SMILE! They may be in opposition but for crying out loud.....why always so bloody serious? All of them- Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle. Appear human!
Which is why Ed Balls is a slam-dunk. He's experienced and knowledgeable. He's well-known. And since his departure in 2015 has actually shown he has humour, a personality and is a nice guy. My view of him changed radically after he was ousted.
I don't know why I'm even suggesting this as it seems so obvious if you want Labour in power. I don't incidentally, so I'm not sure why I'm telling you this.
Is Labour more interested in debating political theory and abstract-concept, or do they want to run the country?
You're probably right about Cooper but she's still leagues above say Dodds. I agree with you about Balls but he's not currently in the Labour Party.
I think in its current state, they have a few people that are decent if not fantastic - but they could be better than they are.
If I am to be honest, I have never predicted Labour winning in 2024 - I think a Hung Parliament is the best they could ever hope for but they need to hope either somebody charismatic is elected then and they can take over.
If Starmer can achieve progress in Labour itself - even if not in the country - to get it back to a winning position, then in the long-term that is good for them.
However, I do stand by the point I've made before, Starmer was the best choice they could have made. I don't regret voting for him whatsoever - it's just a shame in a way that he was the best they had to offer.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
“People like you”. Exactly.
Yes people who do a job and expect to be paid for it. Something wrong with that? People who sell their skills then all of a sudden found that there was suddenly a huge new pool of people selling the same skill but asking a lot less
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
I could actually support Labour if it was like what you aspire to.
Number one made me chuckle - it is both so bloody true and obvious and something I can't see changing
People who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum in the eyes of too many
See, that last line of yours, are you sure that's not you just repeating a trope from the Leave/Remain propaganda wars rather than a true & fair charge against the Labour Party?
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
My point is that there is a greater good in keeping some factor input prices low. If @Gardenwalker pays less for labour (I of course have no idea if he does) then he has more to invest and might employ a whole new person. If supermarket prices are low you have more discretionary income to buy widgets etc.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
It's so disappointing to see people attacking the electorate though for this polling. It's up to Labour to change, not to shout at the electorate. That was probably the best thing Starmer has said, that Labour must change. Whether he can change it, is still to be seen.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
“People like you”. Exactly.
Yes people who do a job and expect to be paid for it. Something wrong with that? People who sell their skills then all of a sudden found that there was suddenly a huge new pool of people selling the same skill but asking a lot less
As I said I don’t agree with your logic.
Sadly you choose to refer to “people like me” to whom you stick up two fingers.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I thought you were a LibDem? I voted Green last time, defecting from the LibDems after years of support. I kind of regret it.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
See also “freeports”.
Lets boost manufacturing by making it cheaper to flood the area with imports!!!
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
I see that Rishi’s budget has unraveled already. A mix of wildly optimistic economic assumptions and spending figures that imply, for a majority of government departments, Austerity redux, and even then he only gets the deficit back to where it was.
Despite all his emphasis on being honest with people about the challenge ahead, he’s been dishonest, hiding the cuts that are implicit in his forward spending plans and ducking all the big decisions that should have been taken about the future financing of public services.
"Getting the deficit back to where it was" within a few years of the greatest recession in a century is not something to say "only" about.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
You are sinking in quick sand
You can stay still and sink slowly but definitely sink or You can try and get out and risk sinking faster or possibly escape
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
What!? As a software engineer? I find that incredible.
I see that Rishi’s budget has unraveled already. A mix of wildly optimistic economic assumptions and spending figures that imply, for a majority of government departments, Austerity redux, and even then he only gets the deficit back to where it was.
Despite all his emphasis on being honest with people about the challenge ahead, he’s been dishonest, hiding the cuts that are implicit in his forward spending plans and ducking all the big decisions that should have been taken about the future financing of public services.
Maybe I've dealt with too many Goldman Sachs people in my career, but I can't help seeing him through that particular prism. Excessive showmanship, smoke and mirrors, promises they don't keep and then moving on before the mess arrives is pretty much how they work. McKinsey is similar.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
This is what being a Tory at the start of the century was like.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
You should have tried being a Tory in the Blair years. Fuck. Absolutely nowhere to go except the lunatic fringe who genuinely seemed to believe that getting out of the EU was the answer to everything (as opposed to marginally desirable).
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
You mean to win an election you have to win the most votes in a majority of constituencies? I thought it was about securing a higher national percentage of the vote that Blair did. Don't forget that the Labour defeat of 2017 was the BEST LABOUR PERFORMANCE SINCE 1945
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
“People like you”. Exactly.
Yes people who do a job and expect to be paid for it. Something wrong with that? People who sell their skills then all of a sudden found that there was suddenly a huge new pool of people selling the same skill but asking a lot less
As I said I don’t agree with your logic.
Sadly you choose to refer to “people like me” to whom you stick up two fingers.
You said you employ programmers....therefore you are "people like you" . You benefitted from wage stagnation. The people you employed did not benefit from wage stagnation simple as that. You bang on about the economic benefits of being in the eu but they only accrue to you not the people you employ
I've just managed to get away from work and chores and am just catching up.
The rolling average for the UK positive test rate is now 84.4 per 100k; I can't remember the exact value from yesterday but I think it was 89-point-something, so once again down about five over a 24-hour period. Again there are only two local authority areas with rates above 200 per 100k: this time it's Corby and NW Leics, rather than Leicester. Numbers are still reasonably low all over Wales and have cratered almost everywhere South of London. Things still look like they're headed in the right direction.
Come May, maybe even April, case numbers will be similar to last summer, and at least the most vulnerable half of the country will have had the vaccine, probably significantly more than that.
Yet the govt has given us not before dates placing restrictions on re-opening that will keep us closed 4-8 weeks longer than necessary. Their folly is the very definition of dates not data.
I'm actually sympathetic to the notion that restrictions should be eased in stages, with enough time in between for things to go horribly wrong, if they're going to do so, before proceeding to the next step.
That said, if cases keep declining at the present rate then the Plague will have almost evaporated in much of the country and will be largely confined to residual pockets by Easter. Under those circumstances, sticking to another five week gap after we get the shops and gyms back on April 12th might prove a tough sell...
It`s not only a tough sell - would it be legal? It would amount to constraint of liberties with no good reason.
Following on from that, I had a frustrating chat with my mother`s care home yesterday.
They said that they are "hoping" that normal visits can resume from 21 June. I said that in two weeks` time my mother and father (he still lives in their house) will both have received the second jabs so why can`t they meet up as normal then. They said that it isn`t just about their safety, the home must consider the safety of their staff and other residents. I said that 100% of staff and 100% of residents will also have been vaccinated with 2nd jab (they`ve had 100% takeup). They said, we can`t allow normal visits until the government says so. I said, what even when it is illogical and you are stopping man and wife from seeing each other in a meaningful way with no risk? They said yes but what about our insurance? We can`t allow visits until the insurance lets us.
Fuck fuck FUCK.
That does not sound right. From next Monday the government guidance is one named visitor per resident, potentially expanding to 2 visitors per resident from 12 April.
Thanks for that - I see it has come out today. I`ll have a read.
Note that the One Named Visitor policy from 8 March to which you refer is NOT normal visiting by any means. My dad will have to wear a mask and can hold hands but not hug and not in mum`s room. (She desperately wants visitors to see her in private in her room.) Only in a designated space with care workers milling round.
It's amazing how some see the future so clearly after one opinion poll.
I'm of the view politics has been in a deeper freeze than a Pfizer vaccine dose since last spring. The onset of the pandemic suspended "normal" politics and that will continue to be the case until we are out of the immediate public health crisis.
We'll then be into the longer deeper phase of the crisis - the economic (and possibly the cultural). The Budget appears to have been initially successful from a public opinion viewpoint (and if you're in a populist Government, that's really all that matters) even though the rise in Corporation Tax was surprising to this observer.
In economic terms, we know there's going to be a strong rebound this year - call it a "vaccine bounce" if you wish - but that may well being inflation and higher interest rates back to the table. What will be the electoral and psychological impacts of a return to more normal monetary policy conditions? After more than a decade of near zero interest rates and a decade and a half of low inflation, how will we all respond to rises in both?
The freezing of tax thresholds has also gone under the radar but that, if combined with inflation, will bring more into both the main and the higher tax bands.
One might almost think short-term popularity has been the aim (see the comment on populism above) while the longer term economic consequences have been kicked down the road for a few months.
I find that curious given a majority of 80 and three years before an election would seem ideal circumstances to do the difficult and unpopular stuff and cut taxes before the next election. Unfortunately, Covid has lost Sunak and Johnson a year and they may have to go into the election against a backdrop of rising taxes.
The other side of the thawing of politics is we will go back to the day-to-day and that means not only the consequences (intended or otherwise) of leaving the EU but also the business as usual of Government which we've not really had since the election. If I've learnt nothing else it's not the big things that cause Governments trouble, it's the small things - the misjudgements which lead to resignations which become mini-crises. Individually, they don't resonate but cumulatively, against a changing backdrop, they do.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
You should have tried being a Tory in the Blair years. Fuck. Absolutely nowhere to go except the lunatic fringe who genuinely seemed to believe that getting out of the EU was the answer to everything (as opposed to marginally desirable).
I, a formerly loyal tory voter, am completely and utterly furious with the party I used to support. I've never been more angry with them.
Every other tory voter, every single one, and a few non-tories besides, appear on board.
Ah well, a week is a long time in politics.
I think the root of your ire is the departure from basing decisions on conservative principles and instead basing them on naked populism. Is that right? Out of interest did you support Brexit?
Yep Brexiteer but big Thatcherite through and through. Which tells you everything
It doesn't tell me why you went ape for Donald Trump.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
Indeed in the words of the beloved Margaret "you can't buck the market".
Now rather than import workers, we export the jobs. So it goes...
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
I could actually support Labour if it was like what you aspire to.
Number one made me chuckle - it is both so bloody true and obvious and something I can't see changing
People who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum in the eyes of too many
See, that last line of yours, are you sure that's not you just repeating a trope from the Leave/Remain propaganda wars rather than a true & fair charge against the Labour Party?
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
Well quite. UK IT developers now compete with offshore developers based in India, for example, where salaries are much lower.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
Look at Berlusconi's Italy. Only a madman could say that it thrived under its leadership, or that he was a good leader, but he kept winning. Partly because of his media control, but also because he Had Something Winning.
I really don't want that future for Britain, so I have to hope that this is the hubris/nemesis cycle to end all hubris/nemesis cycles.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
I could actually support Labour if it was like what you aspire to.
Number one made me chuckle - it is both so bloody true and obvious and something I can't see changing
People who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum in the eyes of too many
See, that last line of yours, are you sure that's not you just repeating a trope from the Leave/Remain propaganda wars rather than a true & fair charge against the Labour Party?
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
I've said this to you before, but you really need to go have a look at what the likes of Dawn Butler have to say for themselves. She pretty much epitomises for me the notion that "people who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum". It's very obviously prevalent in some of the darker corners of Labour-supporting Twitter.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
Well quite. UK IT developers now compete with offshore developers based in India, for example, where salaries are much lower.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
which wasn't the issue.
The point was stagnant wages (regardless of cause) created Brexit.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
I think the header is excellent and Labour should do all these things. But I think even if so, they would still be behind.
A lot of people like the Tories, that's just how it is. I can respect that unlike a lot of the nutters on Twitter.
C'mon CHB. That's way too accepting. There are 3 things certain in life. Death, taxes, and long periods of Tory government end in sleaze, chaos, disaffection, and a Labour majority government.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
What!? As a software engineer? I find that incredible.
I've just managed to get away from work and chores and am just catching up.
The rolling average for the UK positive test rate is now 84.4 per 100k; I can't remember the exact value from yesterday but I think it was 89-point-something, so once again down about five over a 24-hour period. Again there are only two local authority areas with rates above 200 per 100k: this time it's Corby and NW Leics, rather than Leicester. Numbers are still reasonably low all over Wales and have cratered almost everywhere South of London. Things still look like they're headed in the right direction.
Come May, maybe even April, case numbers will be similar to last summer, and at least the most vulnerable half of the country will have had the vaccine, probably significantly more than that.
Yet the govt has given us not before dates placing restrictions on re-opening that will keep us closed 4-8 weeks longer than necessary. Their folly is the very definition of dates not data.
I'm actually sympathetic to the notion that restrictions should be eased in stages, with enough time in between for things to go horribly wrong, if they're going to do so, before proceeding to the next step.
That said, if cases keep declining at the present rate then the Plague will have almost evaporated in much of the country and will be largely confined to residual pockets by Easter. Under those circumstances, sticking to another five week gap after we get the shops and gyms back on April 12th might prove a tough sell...
It`s not only a tough sell - would it be legal? It would amount to constraint of liberties with no good reason.
Following on from that, I had a frustrating chat with my mother`s care home yesterday.
They said that they are "hoping" that normal visits can resume from 21 June. I said that in two weeks` time my mother and father (he still lives in their house) will both have received the second jabs so why can`t they meet up as normal then. They said that it isn`t just about their safety, the home must consider the safety of their staff and other residents. I said that 100% of staff and 100% of residents will also have been vaccinated with 2nd jab (they`ve had 100% takeup). They said, we can`t allow normal visits until the government says so. I said, what even when it is illogical and you are stopping man and wife from seeing each other in a meaningful way with no risk? They said yes but what about our insurance? We can`t allow visits until the insurance lets us.
Fuck fuck FUCK.
That does not sound right. From next Monday the government guidance is one named visitor per resident, potentially expanding to 2 visitors per resident from 12 April.
Thanks for that - I see it has come out today. I`ll have a read.
Note that the One Named Visitor policy from 8 March to which you refer is NOT normal visiting by any means. My dad will have to wear a mask and can hold hands but not hug and not in mum`s room. (She desperately wants visitors to see her in private in her room.) Only in a designated space with care workers milling round.
I understand that. Hopefully its well before June.
At least from next week it can be in the home and not external pods which is a horrible thing, especially midwinter.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
Well quite. UK IT developers now compete with offshore developers based in India, for example, where salaries are much lower.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
which wasn't the issue.
The point was stagnant wages (regardless of cause) created Brexit.
It certainly didn’t help.
I stand by my contention though that Brexit was largely voted for by the economically inactive, who are actually on fixed incomes, ie the state pension.
I've just managed to get away from work and chores and am just catching up.
The rolling average for the UK positive test rate is now 84.4 per 100k; I can't remember the exact value from yesterday but I think it was 89-point-something, so once again down about five over a 24-hour period. Again there are only two local authority areas with rates above 200 per 100k: this time it's Corby and NW Leics, rather than Leicester. Numbers are still reasonably low all over Wales and have cratered almost everywhere South of London. Things still look like they're headed in the right direction.
Come May, maybe even April, case numbers will be similar to last summer, and at least the most vulnerable half of the country will have had the vaccine, probably significantly more than that.
Yet the govt has given us not before dates placing restrictions on re-opening that will keep us closed 4-8 weeks longer than necessary. Their folly is the very definition of dates not data.
I'm actually sympathetic to the notion that restrictions should be eased in stages, with enough time in between for things to go horribly wrong, if they're going to do so, before proceeding to the next step.
That said, if cases keep declining at the present rate then the Plague will have almost evaporated in much of the country and will be largely confined to residual pockets by Easter. Under those circumstances, sticking to another five week gap after we get the shops and gyms back on April 12th might prove a tough sell...
It`s not only a tough sell - would it be legal? It would amount to constraint of liberties with no good reason.
Following on from that, I had a frustrating chat with my mother`s care home yesterday.
They said that they are "hoping" that normal visits can resume from 21 June. I said that in two weeks` time my mother and father (he still lives in their house) will both have received the second jabs so why can`t they meet up as normal then. They said that it isn`t just about their safety, the home must consider the safety of their staff and other residents. I said that 100% of staff and 100% of residents will also have been vaccinated with 2nd jab (they`ve had 100% takeup). They said, we can`t allow normal visits until the government says so. I said, what even when it is illogical and you are stopping man and wife from seeing each other in a meaningful way with no risk? They said yes but what about our insurance? We can`t allow visits until the insurance lets us.
Fuck fuck FUCK.
Very frustrating, but good news that your mum's CH has had 100% takeup of the vaccines.
Not when they forget why people are being vaccinated in the first place.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
Well quite. UK IT developers now compete with offshore developers based in India, for example, where salaries are much lower.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
Outsourcing was big in the 90's there was still more than enough onshore jobs because data couldn't be moved that wages still rose. That is where the eu and fom came in
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
Well, that is the point of a Tory party promoting massive government spending. Massive bungs to cronies and porkbarrelling of constituencies.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I think you do represent the thinking of quite a lot of people. Why not take the gamble?
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For a lot of manual trades Eastern Europeans undercut the price of the work.
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
Unhelpful phrasing from MWP Melding. Causes unnecessary excitement.
I think it’s a quote from a book he wrote in 2008 called ‘Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020?’
It posed a great many questions. What it didn’t have was any coherent answers to the questions it posed.
And the key on question of course was answered in the affirmative in 2014.
That's not even true, we get AZN at extra special mates rates, below even $2 eveybody else gets it... Its pfizer we alleged paid more for.
The UK approach would be more described as fund the R&D properly with less red tape / strings attached and then if it comes good have a deal where you benefit from this.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
I agree with so much of this including my own bugbears regarding incivility towards Tories and supporters whilst purporting to hold some sort of moral superiority, and obsession with progressive minority rights.
I do think there is a pendulum though that will swing like it did in the mid 90s when a labour government seemed inevitable.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
Rural areas often look nice but there's a lot of low wages in farming.
It doesn't help when houses in the Dales cost a fortune.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
Why on earth is Australia relying on the EU for their vaccines?
Because, and this tends to be forgotten, the US instituted an export ban on vaccines manufactured there. Which is why the UK is getting its Moderna vaccines from the new Swiss plant, and several months after they were contractually supposed to deliver.
I'm not sure that it's a specific export ban so much as it's monopoly purchase of supply due to subsidy agreements signed with Moderna as part of operation warp speed. Very much like our agreements with AZ, Novavax and Valneva where our domestic manufacturing agreements bind them to supply the UK government's full allocation first before exports are allowed.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
Rural areas often look nice but there's a lot of low wages in farming areas.
It doesn't help when houses in the Dales cost a fortune in comparison.
And often combined with all the nice bits being bought by outsiders....
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
It looks like your vote was basically jealousy and spite, or at least that how it comes across.
Sad.
No it was the eu isn't working economically for me. So take a gamble that getting out will see a return to my wages rising again.
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
I really struggle to understand how, as a 'senior software engineer', your wages have not risen since 2002?
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
I was a junior coder for about five minutes in 2000, on £21k. I guess the same role might pay £30k now? Which is probably par with inflation.
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
Well quite. UK IT developers now compete with offshore developers based in India, for example, where salaries are much lower.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
which wasn't the issue.
The point was stagnant wages (regardless of cause) created Brexit.
It certainly didn’t help.
I stand by my contention though that Brexit was largely voted for by the economically inactive, who are actually on fixed incomes, ie the state pension.
Well we can call bollocks to that easily enough
11.9 million over 65 in the uk 64% of those over 65 that voted, voted for leave
Even assuming all over 65's voted at all which isn't true means only around 7.6million that voted leave were pensioners so not even half of leave voters
Today's 13 point conservative lead is extraordinary and more polling is needed to confirm a tend, but to be honest I do not see how Labour negate a conservative chancellor who puts up corporation tax for most companies to 25% in 2 years but offers huge incentives for investment by companies over the next two years.
And of course away, from the politically engaged, most people seem to think the budget was the fairest in years and no amount of arguing against, or extolling the EU on the day they stopped the legitimate export of vaccines to Australia, is going to improve support against HMG
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20-30 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it. In fact look at something like zoom, lots of the coding is done in China.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
That gets to the heart of the matter.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
But right now, that's not where we are. The choice is Johnson or Starmer. It's a flawed choice, sure, though less so than it was last December. Either this government with no brain and no conscience is worth removing, or it isn't. And that means backing the opposition (even if you think it's meh) or waiting until 2029.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The author has a name. The joy of the hard left is their straw men. I have never pushed an "under any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead line" - such landslides happen once every political blue moon.
I note that the respondent (if thats the game you want to play @bigjohnowls ) says "2017" and not "2019". Did the election of death not happen? In 2017 Labour lost because the Tories piled 2.3m more votes into the pot, a 20% increase in people afraid of Labour. When the governing party grows that many votes on top of a majority there is little the opposition can do.
I have witnessed Labour activists and former officials who are experts at electoral math and strategy spout similar false-fact bullshit like this, utterly consumed by the "stab in the back" nonsense that is the only excuse the hard left have for being so utterly hated.
Final point. The "radical agenda which inspired millions" was REJECTED by many more millions. Whatever Labour's route back to connection with voters is, go back to relive rampant failure can't be it.
Surely the aim should be to become more popular than the Tories, not merely more popular?
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
Labour's ceiling seems to be around 43%, which even when they were leading, the Tories were still in the high 30s/low 40s. Starmer has a few points here and then because of LD/Green voters but he's not yet converted Tory voters. And it's doubtful whether he ever can.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
You should have tried being a Tory in the Blair years. Fuck. Absolutely nowhere to go except the lunatic fringe who genuinely seemed to believe that getting out of the EU was the answer to everything (as opposed to marginally desirable).
Can't fault their staying power, ironically!
In 1946, a senior figure under Churchill was lambasting the record of the National Government to a friend of his. He pointed out the failures over rearmament, the inadequacies of the Public Assistance Committee, the errors in dealing with Mussolini and Hitler, and the reluctance to reform the economic system.
To which this friend nodded in agreement, and then ‘burst in, with a catch in his voice, ‘But don’t forget, they gave us the tarriff.’ There was a generation of Conservative history in his voice.’
That took 51 years from the founding of the Fair Trade Campaign in 1881.
Staying power has never been a problem for the Tories.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20-30 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it. In fact look at something like zoom, lots of the coding is done in China.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
Very true, I think a lot of typical office jobs will go in the next 20 to 30 years if I am honest
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
Yep. So true. And this is why I have little truck with the notion that the "liberal left" patronize and despise ordinary people. They don't. This - the sort of shit you describe here - is what patronizing and despising ordinary people really looks like. It's what right populists do. Play them for suckers for their own self-interest. It's the only thing they do.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
Yep. So true. And this is why I have little truck with the notion that the "liberal left" patronize and despise ordinary people. They don't. This - the sort of shit you describe here - is what patronizing and despising ordinary people really looks like. It's what right populists do. Play them for suckers for their own self-interest. It's the only thing they do.
It`s not the "liberal left" that patronise and despise ordinary people it`s the non-liberal left that do.
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
A number of points - yes, we have a CINO Government. Indeed, had that Budget been delivered by Gordon Brown or by an LD or further back an Alliance CoE, I wouldn't have been surprised. That's the one comfort if you aren't a Conservative - you've a Government that does all the things you want AND you can vote against it.
Hiking Corporation Tax, plenty of public spending - what's not to like?
To be fair, if someone came down my street with a political leaflet and dishing out wheelbarrows full of £20 notes, I'd probably read the leaflet and leave Mrs Stodge to count the money.
I do agree the successful leader utilises all the experience and talent at his or her command. Both Blair and Cameron understood this but at the same time there's no substitute for experience on the frontbench and those sitting on the Opposition frontbench should have the opportunity to learn and develop - I don't think Anneliese Dodds has done a bad job in opposition to Sunak under the circumstances but she will need to not only highlight the inconsistencies in Sunak's plans but offer a viable alternative.
The other aspect is populism - you have currently a populist Government which is desperate to be liked. There will inevitably come a point when that is no longer the case and once populists cease being popular, they are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Sometimes in politics you have to do unpopular things but which are the right things - Thatcher understood that, I don't think Johnson does.
The point about internal discipline is another aspect - it's easy to be disciplined when you are doing well. It will be the first thing that suffers when this Government hits its trough.
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Your obsession with GPT3, I wish I hadn't mentioned it. It actually won't do what you say, as it can't, its a one trick pony.
Actually no to interpreters....all these AI have been shown not to actually fully understand context.
GPT3 also isnt the answer to most of the jobs you list. But other AI tools certainly are / will be along.
As I said previously, they won't fully.replace these jobs they will aid in them. That may in the case of things like medicine mean we can treat more people, other industries, yes you might not need your creative design agency to have as many people doing whatever they charge crazy money for.
The big thing it will allow is rapid prototyping...I want the graphic to look like that but errh a bit different says the client, at the moment leads to the designer spending another week making a load of different versions. With the AI / ML based tools, you can / will be able to show new variations on the theme.
Adobe are spending a lot of R&D money on these kind of tools.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
There is one thing though which is a huge pull for the UK - language. If you want to work anywhere in the world then the Lingua Franca is English. It is also why lots of the English speaking ex commonwealth also want to come here.
This argues that linguistic proximity - how similar to the host language also matters. This is key for English as our geography has led to the Germanic base language structure with the Franco Latin higher language being incorporated from 1066 onwards.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms reintroducing the NHS internal market, specifically against the 1997 manifesto.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
That gets to the heart of the matter.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
But right now, that's not where we are. The choice is Johnson or Starmer. It's a flawed choice, sure, though less so than it was last December. Either this government with no brain and no conscience is worth removing, or it isn't. And that means backing the opposition (even if you think it's meh) or waiting until 2029.
Your choice, Proper Lefties.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
Genuine LOL there! Prodigals are welcome back at any time, and the Proper Lefties will only tell you to fuck off and join the Tories anyway...
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
A comedy government advert on the radio this morning. It called on sheep and cow farmers to contact them, where they could get help to understand the new trade deal opportunities that will allow them to start selling their animal products to "Tokyo and Montreal".
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
Yep. So true. And this is why I have little truck with the notion that the "liberal left" patronize and despise ordinary people. They don't. This - the sort of shit you describe here - is what patronizing and despising ordinary people really looks like. It's what right populists do. Play them for suckers for their own self-interest. It's the only thing they do.
It isn't either/or. Both patronise from different sides. The problem for Labour is that Tory propaganda is hitting home at the moment, and the Labour propaganda does the opposite.
I could actually support Labour if it was like what you aspire to.
Number one made me chuckle - it is both so bloody true and obvious and something I can't see changing
People who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum in the eyes of too many
See, that last line of yours, are you sure that's not you just repeating a trope from the Leave/Remain propaganda wars rather than a true & fair charge against the Labour Party?
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
We did have one of your fellow travellers looking forward to execution of tories the other day. Claimed to be of the liberal left
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
Comments
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I really don't care if employers do well as long as some of it finds its way into my pocket as well. Sadly people like you wanted to keep it all for themselves so we stuck two fingers up to you
35% would be fine if the Tories got low enough for that to be a win, 40% doesn't help if people like the Tories more.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
As no new trade deals have been signed which affect this trade, the advert is rampant bollocks. The farmers know its rampant bollocks. So the advert isn't aimed at them.
Sadly this is propaganda for the ill-informed by liars. The government want white van man to hear the advert, think "Brexit is working", and then feel happy. That the message is an absolute lie is exactly the point.
Personally I would prefer a political system where the government doesn't set out to openly lie to people it thinks are ignorant and stupid.
Exactly.
I think in its current state, they have a few people that are decent if not fantastic - but they could be better than they are.
If I am to be honest, I have never predicted Labour winning in 2024 - I think a Hung Parliament is the best they could ever hope for but they need to hope either somebody charismatic is elected then and they can take over.
If Starmer can achieve progress in Labour itself - even if not in the country - to get it back to a winning position, then in the long-term that is good for them.
However, I do stand by the point I've made before, Starmer was the best choice they could have made. I don't regret voting for him whatsoever - it's just a shame in a way that he was the best they had to offer.
Of course the gamble might not pay off.
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
I am honestly of the view Labour is doomed whilst the Tory Party is in this state, they're just good at winning!
I worked in IT in the private sector for my entire career prior to retiring three years ago and I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of an industry which continually had above average wage growth, particularly since 2000.
Very puzzling that you have not been able to enjoy some of that.
Sadly you choose to refer to “people like me” to whom you stick up two fingers.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
You can stay still and sink slowly but definitely sink
or
You can try and get out and risk sinking faster or possibly escape
But my contention is that the issue is not FOM, but more (in this case) near-shoring.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252478407/Average-UK-tech-salary-grows-to-74000-a-year-in-2019
For IT workers the wage for a senior developer in Northern England was £45k in 2005. It's the same now and that senior developer also needs to know a lot more than 16 years ago.
http://www.jobserve.com/KJf8T is a prime example
Note that the One Named Visitor policy from 8 March to which you refer is NOT normal visiting by any means. My dad will have to wear a mask and can hold hands but not hug and not in mum`s room. (She desperately wants visitors to see her in private in her room.) Only in a designated space with care workers milling round.
It's amazing how some see the future so clearly after one opinion poll.
I'm of the view politics has been in a deeper freeze than a Pfizer vaccine dose since last spring. The onset of the pandemic suspended "normal" politics and that will continue to be the case until we are out of the immediate public health crisis.
We'll then be into the longer deeper phase of the crisis - the economic (and possibly the cultural). The Budget appears to have been initially successful from a public opinion viewpoint (and if you're in a populist Government, that's really all that matters) even though the rise in Corporation Tax was surprising to this observer.
In economic terms, we know there's going to be a strong rebound this year - call it a "vaccine bounce" if you wish - but that may well being inflation and higher interest rates back to the table. What will be the electoral and psychological impacts of a return to more normal monetary policy conditions? After more than a decade of near zero interest rates and a decade and a half of low inflation, how will we all respond to rises in both?
The freezing of tax thresholds has also gone under the radar but that, if combined with inflation, will bring more into both the main and the higher tax bands.
One might almost think short-term popularity has been the aim (see the comment on populism above) while the longer term economic consequences have been kicked down the road for a few months.
I find that curious given a majority of 80 and three years before an election would seem ideal circumstances to do the difficult and unpopular stuff and cut taxes before the next election. Unfortunately, Covid has lost Sunak and Johnson a year and they may have to go into the election against a backdrop of rising taxes.
The other side of the thawing of politics is we will go back to the day-to-day and that means not only the consequences (intended or otherwise) of leaving the EU but also the business as usual of Government which we've not really had since the election. If I've learnt nothing else it's not the big things that cause Governments trouble, it's the small things - the misjudgements which lead to resignations which become mini-crises. Individually, they don't resonate but cumulatively, against a changing backdrop, they do.
Now rather than import workers, we export the jobs. So it goes...
Who the hell is doing this onshore.
That, of course, has f*ck-all to do with the EU and will unaffected by Brexit.
I really don't want that future for Britain, so I have to hope that this is the hubris/nemesis cycle to end all hubris/nemesis cycles.
Oh and a lot of smaller companies (i.e. small software houses) won't outsource work - been there suffered the pain never again.
The point was stagnant wages (regardless of cause) created Brexit.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
https://www.technojobs.co.uk/info/developer-guides/what-is-the-salary-of-a-software-developer.phtml
At least from next week it can be in the home and not external pods which is a horrible thing, especially midwinter.
I stand by my contention though that Brexit was largely voted for by the economically inactive, who are actually on fixed incomes, ie the state pension.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
https://uk.indeed.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-jobs?advn=1890836213084885&vjk=7a341686e2e5b8b7
(In my days, we used VI, and we loved it.)
https://twitter.com/lukemcgee/status/1367534078870888452/photo/1
It posed a great many questions. What it didn’t have was any coherent answers to the questions it posed.
And the key on question of course was answered in the affirmative in 2014.
The UK approach would be more described as fund the R&D properly with less red tape / strings attached and then if it comes good have a deal where you benefit from this.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
I agree with so much of this including my own bugbears regarding incivility towards Tories and supporters whilst purporting to hold some sort of moral superiority, and obsession with progressive minority rights.
I do think there is a pendulum though that will swing like it did in the mid 90s when a labour government seemed inevitable.
It doesn't help when houses in the Dales cost a fortune.
Need a webpage, just tell it what you want and it'll knock something up in seconds.
Yes, it has been mentioned, a few times
It was a Trump-era prohibition that was not rescinded by Biden.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-want-my-brexit-good-and-strong
11.9 million over 65 in the uk
64% of those over 65 that voted, voted for leave
Even assuming all over 65's voted at all which isn't true means only around 7.6million that voted leave were pensioners so not even half of leave voters
And of course away, from the politically engaged, most people seem to think the budget was the fairest in years and no amount of arguing against, or extolling the EU on the day they stopped the legitimate export of vaccines to Australia, is going to improve support against HMG
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/97395710#/
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
But right now, that's not where we are. The choice is Johnson or Starmer. It's a flawed choice, sure, though less so than it was last December. Either this government with no brain and no conscience is worth removing, or it isn't. And that means backing the opposition (even if you think it's meh) or waiting until 2029.
Your choice, Proper Lefties.
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
To which this friend nodded in agreement, and then ‘burst in, with a catch in his voice, ‘But don’t forget, they gave us the tarriff.’ There was a generation of Conservative history in his voice.’
That took 51 years from the founding of the Fair Trade Campaign in 1881.
Staying power has never been a problem for the Tories.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
So even they will go, in the end
GPT3 has just summarised Brexit:
https://twitter.com/ByGpt3/status/1367485174338969602?s=20
Hiking Corporation Tax, plenty of public spending - what's not to like?
To be fair, if someone came down my street with a political leaflet and dishing out wheelbarrows full of £20 notes, I'd probably read the leaflet and leave Mrs Stodge to count the money.
I do agree the successful leader utilises all the experience and talent at his or her command. Both Blair and Cameron understood this but at the same time there's no substitute for experience on the frontbench and those sitting on the Opposition frontbench should have the opportunity to learn and develop - I don't think Anneliese Dodds has done a bad job in opposition to Sunak under the circumstances but she will need to not only highlight the inconsistencies in Sunak's plans but offer a viable alternative.
The other aspect is populism - you have currently a populist Government which is desperate to be liked. There will inevitably come a point when that is no longer the case and once populists cease being popular, they are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Sometimes in politics you have to do unpopular things but which are the right things - Thatcher understood that, I don't think Johnson does.
The point about internal discipline is another aspect - it's easy to be disciplined when you are doing well. It will be the first thing that suffers when this Government hits its trough.
Actually no to interpreters....all these AI have been shown not to actually fully understand context.
GPT3 also isnt the answer to most of the jobs you list. But other AI tools certainly are / will be along.
As I said previously, they won't fully.replace these jobs they will aid in them. That may in the case of things like medicine mean we can treat more people, other industries, yes you might not need your creative design agency to have as many people doing whatever they charge crazy money for.
The big thing it will allow is rapid prototyping...I want the graphic to look like that but errh a bit different says the client, at the moment leads to the designer spending another week making a load of different versions. With the AI / ML based tools, you can / will be able to show new variations on the theme.
Adobe are spending a lot of R&D money on these kind of tools.
Franca is English. It is also why lots of the English speaking ex commonwealth also want to come here.
Interestingly when I googled this the following paper came up
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911197/
This argues that linguistic proximity - how similar to the host language also matters. This is key for English as our geography has led to the Germanic base language structure with the Franco Latin higher language being incorporated from 1066 onwards.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Genuine LOL there! Prodigals are welcome back at any time, and the Proper Lefties will only tell you to fuck off and join the Tories anyway...