Truss once again topping the CONHome ratings – politicalbetting.com

2 minutes of staff work, and the Mogster's house at Gournay Court.

Actually pretty good for a 800sqm Grade 2* listed Jacobean manor.

Goes up in my estimation. There are a couple more things to do in addition to the light bulbs, but they are really tricky ones.

EPC


Detail

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

Carnyx said:

On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:

"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.

Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."

Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter than street gangs, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Free Movement was a government’s policy. Ending it was the result of a referendum of the people.

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:

"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.

Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."

Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.

Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

I'm not for one second suggesting that all Polish and Romanian people were exploited. Some definitely were though.

Your son's girlfriend did she (or her family with her) come over on their own terms?

There were many companies that paid to ship people over like they were a commodity then threw people into squalid residential conditions and made people indentured servants to work for them to pay off their debts from being brought over. What do you call that?

The reason that the complaints now are from companies and not people is because it isn't people being harmed by the end of the movement, its the companies who've found themselves unable to ship people like commodities.

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

Giving people the right to live, work and study in 30 European countries is in no conceivable way comparable to slavery.

Shipping people in so that 12 working adults live in a 3 bedroom home, in order to pay them a pittance because they're desperate and evade having to offer good terms and conditions is the same mindset and is comparable though.

Shipping in implies those who came had no choice. They did. Slaves didn't. As a country, we chose to allow 12 adults to live in three bedroom houses and to make it as hard as possible for employees to organise collectively in order to secure good wages and working conditions. That had nothing to do with freedom of movement.

People can 'have a choice' to engage with modern day slavery, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.

Especially when employers have 'bonded' the people they've shipped in putting them in debt to pay for their shipping transport, accomodation etc and then make them work off their debts.

You're in complete denial if you think modern day slavery doesn't exist and that free movement didn't facilitate it. And the reason all the complaints now are coming from employers and not people show who is suffering now the flow of modern day slavery has been brought to a halt.

Slavery is illegal.

I hear plenty of people complaining about not being able to find petrol or products in the shops.

Slavery is illegal.

Modern day slavery absolutely does exist.

If you think it doesn't, you need to educate yourself.

There have been plenty of cases of trafficked women having their passports taken and forced to work as prostitutes. Literal sex slaves. "you need to educate yourself" - FFS why do you post this self-satisfied guff?

Yes and that's bad.

There's also been plenty of cases of dozens of people being flown over, put into debt to do so, been put into squalid conditions and made to work for the person who flew them over and repay their debts.

What do you call that? Is it only slavery when it involves sex?

In the building trade this has thankfully died back. But there were some pretty ugly cases where they recruited people with no English language skills, shipped them over, and treated them very, very badly.

There was one case where a seriously injured man was dumped in the countryside outside London, that I recall. Left to die - but was found in time by someone out for a walk...

eek said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

EU labour was exploitive to the locals who were unable to compete against it...

They were unable to compete by working for the minimum wage?

Carnyx said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:

"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.

Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."

Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.

Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.

If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.

Sandpit said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Free Movement was a government’s policy. Ending it was the result of a referendum of the people.

I didn't say it didn't have a mandate. I said it is a form of government intervention that is equivalent to taxation on British people. It is odd that Brexiteers can't acknowledge that.

IshmaelZ said:

bigjohnowls said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

Beaker is no mug

Who is beaker?

Ask RP its one of his quaint nicknames i believe

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

Sandpit said:

Carnyx said:

On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:

"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.

Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."

Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.

Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.

If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.

I would argue that the police in Oxford did a bang up job in convincing everyone who did PPE at Oxford in the 80s and 90s that they were institutionally corrupt.

Good thing those students didn't become influential, eh?

eek said:

Fishing said:

eek said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

EU labour was exploitive to the locals who were unable to compete against it...

Well, unwilling anyway...

Nope - let me refer you back to my story from 1pm or so on the day of the Referendum.

Friend phones on her break to say the entire council estate in Leyland were voting (many who hadn't do so before) because Lidl had opened a local store and all the staff were eastern Europeans and not locals.

Everyone knew locals who had applied but none got as far as interviews.

Good effort in canvassing the entire estate. That's what I call thorough research.

bigjohnowls said:

IshmaelZ said:

bigjohnowls said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

Beaker is no mug

Who is beaker?

Ask RP its one of his quaint nicknames i believe

It used to be Danny Alexander in the Coalition years, but it may be another target now.

TOPPING said:

eek said:

Fishing said:

eek said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

EU labour was exploitive to the locals who were unable to compete against it...

Well, unwilling anyway...

Nope - let me refer you back to my story from 1pm or so on the day of the Referendum.

Friend phones on her break to say the entire council estate in Leyland were voting (many who hadn't do so before) because Lidl had opened a local store and all the staff were eastern Europeans and not locals.

Everyone knew locals who had applied but none got as far as interviews.

Good effort in canvassing the entire estate. That's what I call thorough research.

Nope she in charge of the polling station (as I said on her break and it was why she knew many hadn't voted because she was telling them what they needed to do )..

TOPPING said:

eek said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

EU labour was exploitive to the locals who were unable to compete against it...

They were unable to compete by working for the minimum wage?

Back before people were exploited by FOM my supermarket assistant colleagues and I were all on £2.23 an hour. Now the equivalent job with exploitative FOM labour forcing down wages is on £8.91 an hour - more than double what it should be with inflation.

RochdalePioneers said:

I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.

Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.

New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?

I would say that the problems are largely a product of the last 10 years and could be summarised as:

1) local plans take years to develop and the law that governs it is byzantine and absurd.
2) Sites keep coming through being allowed despite not being in plans because of delays in making plans.
3) little regional co-ordination or direction in relation to plans and growth
4) There has been a government policy of growth to stimulate the economy over everything else resulting in the situation you describe
5) Inherent scepticism about any type of centralised funding for infrastructure on the part of the treasury (2010-2019)
6) Car ownership was allowed to increase substantially post 2010.

Philip_Thompson said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

I'm not for one second suggesting that all Polish and Romanian people were exploited. Some definitely were though.

Your son's girlfriend did she (or her family with her) come over on their own terms?

There were many companies that paid to ship people over like they were a commodity then threw people into squalid residential conditions and made people indentured servants to work for them to pay off their debts from being brought over. What do you call that?

The reason that the complaints now are from companies and not people is because it isn't people being harmed by the end of the movement, its the companies who've found themselves unable to ship people like commodities.

Re the 2nd to last para do you have evidence of that PT? Again doesn't sound like EU immigration but illegal immigration to me. An EU person did not have to put up with that.

Re the last para I think that is back to front. Yes companies are complaining, but it is not because they are 'unable to ship people like commodities' it is because the people aren't commodities, but have free will and were happy to come before and now don't want to or can't, so don't. That is why the companies are complaining. They have lost their productive labour.

These EU labours are not slaves, they can work anywhere in the EU.

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

We do not have a free market solution. A free market would allow employers to recruit from wherever they wanted and pay whatever they wanted. We have a regulated market and a disorganised government that has failed to plan for entirely predictable and predicted challenges scrabbling around for a narrative that might buy them a bit of time.

A government that truly believed in a high wage economy in which employees enjoyed uniformly top class working conditions would not have the trade union laws this one does.

Trade unions don't sustainably boost working conditions, markets do.

Actually trade unions are associated with higher wages, known as the union wage premium. It's a well documented fact in labour economics.

MattW said:

turbotubbs said:

MattW said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

What was the process for this?

Does rather remind me of "nothing done in X months" type of complaints, when the minimal process actually takes X+3 months. Often happens.

The PM says that they asked the hauliers to give them the names of the drivers they wanted visas for and the government would sort it. They provided 127. So far.

So where is the 27 from?

Are we in journos can't count territory? Or just reporting of very early numbers?

5 live this morning said 127

Big_G_NorthWales said:

MattW said:

turbotubbs said:

MattW said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

What was the process for this?

Does rather remind me of "nothing done in X months" type of complaints, when the minimal process actually takes X+3 months. Often happens.

The PM says that they asked the hauliers to give them the names of the drivers they wanted visas for and the government would sort it. They provided 127. So far.

So where is the 27 from?

Are we in journos can't count territory? Or just reporting of very early numbers?

5 live this morning said 127

The 27 comes from the front page of today's Times.

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

We do not have a free market solution. A free market would allow employers to recruit from wherever they wanted and pay whatever they wanted. We have a regulated market and a disorganised government that has failed to plan for entirely predictable and predicted challenges scrabbling around for a narrative that might buy them a bit of time.

A government that truly believed in a high wage economy in which employees enjoyed uniformly top class working conditions would not have the trade union laws this one does.

Trade unions don't sustainably boost working conditions, markets do.

Actually trade unions are associated with higher wages, known as the union wage premium. It's a well documented fact in labour economics.

And if wages go above the market equilibrium it ends up distorting the market and making companies unproductive, resulting in unemployment that can't be resolved by competition bringing wages back down. It also results in companies being unable to compete globally.

See the 70s.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

RochdalePioneers said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

Giving people the right to live, work and study in 30 European countries is in no conceivable way comparable to slavery.

Shipping people in so that 12 working adults live in a 3 bedroom home, in order to pay them a pittance because they're desperate and evade having to offer good terms and conditions is the same mindset and is comparable though.

Shipping in implies those who came had no choice. They did. Slaves didn't. As a country, we chose to allow 12 adults to live in three bedroom houses and to make it as hard as possible for employees to organise collectively in order to secure good wages and working conditions. That had nothing to do with freedom of movement.

Yes. FOM provides a labour pool when you can't attract local labour. The pay and conditions are not a direct result of FOM - we can still pay sane wages and not force 6 in a room conditions.

"Ah but an endless labour pool allows people to be exploited". Yes and no - a restricted labour pool also offers the same opportunity of the legislative and societal framework allows it to be so. Have workers of whatever origin unionised and protected by working time regulations and HSE laws and the exploitation doesn't have to be there. It isn't elsewhere in western Europe with FOM.

Yes the practices that (ultra free marketeer) PT is attacking are simply the results of unfettered free market capitalism. My first job, back in the day when Tories decried the minimum wage as a tax on jobs and an attack on freedom, paid £1.50 an hour. Not a Pole or a Romanian in sight. Just good old fashioned British exploitative employers. Free market capitalism at work.

My first job paid £3.50 a week !!!!

Did you get paid in farthings or groats?

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

That's like saying being unable to drive at 70mph next to a school is taxation.

Laws are not taxation.

Actually your example is a kind of taxation. If you think about taxes and non-tax restrictions on freedom from first principles from a consumer choice point of view they are functionally equivalent, or at least very similar.
In your example the restriction or tax on drivers can be motivated by externality arguments - by driving at 70mph I create the risk of killing a child outside the school, a risk I may inadequately factor into my decision making from the POV of the child or its parents. The speed limit is an effective and proportionate response that probably increases overall social welfare by reducing the incidence of dead kids.
The question is whether ending FoM, and withdrawing from the EU SM, is a welfare-increasing, proportionate and well targeted response to the problems of labour exploitation that you mention. Since you are resorting to arguments like FoM is the same as slavery, I would deduce that the answer to that question is no.

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

That's like saying being unable to drive at 70mph next to a school is taxation.

Laws are not taxation.

Actually your example is a kind of taxation. If you think about taxes and non-tax restrictions on freedom from first principles from a consumer choice point of view they are functionally equivalent, or at least very similar.
In your example the restriction or tax on drivers can be motivated by externality arguments - by driving at 70mph I create the risk of killing a child outside the school, a risk I may inadequately factor into my decision making from the POV of the child or its parents. The speed limit is an effective and proportionate response that probably increases overall social welfare by reducing the incidence of dead kids.
The question is whether ending FoM, and withdrawing from the EU SM, is a welfare-increasing, proportionate and well targeted response to the problems of labour exploitation that you mention. Since you are resorting to arguments like FoM is the same as slavery, I would deduce that the answer to that question is no.

I've always seen FoM as allowing businesses to get all the benefits but without any of the costs. The Left usually whinge about the Right wanting to privatise the profit and nationalise the losses. That's pretty much what FoM was.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

RochdalePioneers said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

Giving people the right to live, work and study in 30 European countries is in no conceivable way comparable to slavery.

Shipping people in so that 12 working adults live in a 3 bedroom home, in order to pay them a pittance because they're desperate and evade having to offer good terms and conditions is the same mindset and is comparable though.

Shipping in implies those who came had no choice. They did. Slaves didn't. As a country, we chose to allow 12 adults to live in three bedroom houses and to make it as hard as possible for employees to organise collectively in order to secure good wages and working conditions. That had nothing to do with freedom of movement.

Yes. FOM provides a labour pool when you can't attract local labour. The pay and conditions are not a direct result of FOM - we can still pay sane wages and not force 6 in a room conditions.

"Ah but an endless labour pool allows people to be exploited". Yes and no - a restricted labour pool also offers the same opportunity of the legislative and societal framework allows it to be so. Have workers of whatever origin unionised and protected by working time regulations and HSE laws and the exploitation doesn't have to be there. It isn't elsewhere in western Europe with FOM.

Yes the practices that (ultra free marketeer) PT is attacking are simply the results of unfettered free market capitalism. My first job, back in the day when Tories decried the minimum wage as a tax on jobs and an attack on freedom, paid £1.50 an hour. Not a Pole or a Romanian in sight. Just good old fashioned British exploitative employers. Free market capitalism at work.

My first job paid £3.50 a week !!!!

We are Monty Python's Yorkshiremen and I claim my thruppence ha'penny.

Philip_Thompson said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

I'm not for one second suggesting that all Polish and Romanian people were exploited. Some definitely were though.

Your son's girlfriend did she (or her family with her) come over on their own terms?

There were many companies that paid to ship people over like they were a commodity then threw people into squalid residential conditions and made people indentured servants to work for them to pay off their debts from being brought over. What do you call that?

The reason that the complaints now are from companies and not people is because it isn't people being harmed by the end of the movement, its the companies who've found themselves unable to ship people like commodities.

My son's girlfriend is doing a Ph.D at Cambridge (as is my son) so not typical I grant you. However it is another area where Brexit has buggered up our and their lives nicely.

RochdalePioneers said:

I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.

Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.

New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?

This is one of the problems. I've posted before about the likelihood of houses being built on the fields behind our house. I'm (really*) not against that in principle, but it does require upgrading facilities. It needs a new road in from the bypass. It needs at least a local shop or two. It needs a school or drastic expansion of the nearest school. The town would benefit from management of the floodplain (which only floods 1-2 times per year) to put in some nice parkland/playing fields (the town lacks this, just a few small play parks) and some good cycling/walking infrastructure to get from the new houses to the town centre in the most direct way. Those - even some of those - could make the development a net plus for us. The proposal is however houses only.

*I'll be a bit sad about it. There's a barn owl will lose its home/hunting ground, the deer will no longer wander through in the early morning, the hares won't be running across the field... But we do need houses and the flood plain means that the houses won't be that close and won't really impact on us in terms of privacy etc. It will be a less nice view, but I'd trade that if it led to new amenities for the town.

tlg86 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

That's like saying being unable to drive at 70mph next to a school is taxation.

Laws are not taxation.

Actually your example is a kind of taxation. If you think about taxes and non-tax restrictions on freedom from first principles from a consumer choice point of view they are functionally equivalent, or at least very similar.
In your example the restriction or tax on drivers can be motivated by externality arguments - by driving at 70mph I create the risk of killing a child outside the school, a risk I may inadequately factor into my decision making from the POV of the child or its parents. The speed limit is an effective and proportionate response that probably increases overall social welfare by reducing the incidence of dead kids.
The question is whether ending FoM, and withdrawing from the EU SM, is a welfare-increasing, proportionate and well targeted response to the problems of labour exploitation that you mention. Since you are resorting to arguments like FoM is the same as slavery, I would deduce that the answer to that question is no.

I've always seen FoM as allowing businesses to get all the benefits but without any of the costs. The Left usually whinge about the Right wanting to privatise the profit and nationalise the losses. That's pretty much what FoM was.

People from Bulgaria were happy to live 6 to a room to earn £8.70 an hour when locally their earnt £2...

IshmaelZ said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

All oaks are trees, therefore all trees are oaks.

A good point. But I think the argument that taxes and non-tax restrictions are equivalent from a consumer choice point of view is a reasonable one. Eg non tariff barriers are sometimes converted to tariff equivalents.

Northern_Al said:

kinabalu said:

How come the Magnificent Muscly Man is so low in these ratings? Is he not loved by his own?

Yes, I thought the same. We're always told, with some justification, that Boris's lovable rogue persona tickles the fancy of vast swathes of the country. And yet the most ardent Tories in this poll seem not to be as enamoured as the voters. I can only guess that the Tories polled are skewed to the fiscally dry, traditional values branch of the party.

They must have no sense of humour. I mean, how can anybody resist this sort of thing? -

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1445104926431006722?t=1p6lV3D-iT_E417kB2JYwg&s=19

So fortunate we are in these challenging times to have this man at the helm.

nico679 said:

The 27 is for fuel tanker drivers , the 127 is for normal HGV drivers .

The policy was delusional as unless you give visas for a much longer period of time why would a driver take a job for just a few months and then be told to bugger off.

127 have and it is 127 more than I expected

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kjh said:

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.

The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.

The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.

The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.

No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.

Who's that a problem for?

Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored.
Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.

For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.

The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.

Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.

EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.

Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.

They tend to ship themselves, though. As someone said, the only thing worse for poor countries than being exploited, is not being exploited. And it doesn't look like minimum wage when you turn it into zlotys.

Yes getting a dozen plus people in a tiny shitty flat in order to all work for minimum wage were willingly shipped.

But employers were facilitating the shipping. There were companies who were not even bothering to look in this country for staff as it was cheaper and easier to fly in staff from abroad and given them shitty beds in crowded flats and they had to work in conditions not exactly far from modern day slavery.

That's why now that such migration has been halted the largest squealing is from employers who can't get away with shipping people like commodities instead of from people themselves.

Is that really an accurate description of EU labour coming over to the UK? Sounds more like a description of illegal immigrants being exploited.

We have used Polish and Romanian people. They certainly are not being exploited. My son's girlfriend is Romanian. She isn't either. An area where you might expect it is piece work in fields, although I understand some of them earn very high wages because of their productivity whereas locals who are less productive get the minimum wage which is actually more expensive because they haven't hit the quota to get any higher pay, hence the attraction of the imported labour. I assume this is because the imported labour is skilled and willing to work it's socks off for a few months at a time before moving on, whereas for local labour it is an endless drudge (with which I can sympathise).

I think it is wrong to assume EU labour was exploitive, unlike illegal labour which certainly is.

I'm not for one second suggesting that all Polish and Romanian people were exploited. Some definitely were though.

Your son's girlfriend did she (or her family with her) come over on their own terms?

There were many companies that paid to ship people over like they were a commodity then threw people into squalid residential conditions and made people indentured servants to work for them to pay off their debts from being brought over. What do you call that?

The reason that the complaints now are from companies and not people is because it isn't people being harmed by the end of the movement, its the companies who've found themselves unable to ship people like commodities.

My son's girlfriend is doing a Ph.D at Cambridge (as is my son) so not typical I grant you. However it is another area where Brexit has buggered up our and their lives nicely.

Fucking over people doing PhDs at Cambridge is probably viewed as part of the Brexit dividend though, sticking it to the liberal metropolitan elite innit.

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

eek said:

tlg86 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

One thought I have had for years is that the government could have driven the kind of industrial transformation that Beaker is now such an advocate of. Instead of just piling on a Corporation Tax cut they could have made it conditional.

Let big companies only pay 19% tax if they are a living wage employer. If they maintain no forced waiving of working time rules. If they give proper maternity and sick pay. That would have had a huge impact on pay and working conditions.

Instead we have people like Johnson triumphing the slashing of both corporation taxes and corporate responsibility, then working why companies are paying low wages and imposing poor conditions as direct result of their own policies to deliver exactly that.

That shows your short thinking and is typical of Champagne Socialists like yourself.

The state setting a "living wage" becomes a ceiling rather than a floor. So you expect people can earn that and not a penny more, even if they're skilled.

Having a free market solution to raise wages like we're seeing now isn't simply about getting people to a "living wage" . . . it means skilled workers who graft and apply themselves absolutely should be able to earn more than a living wage.

Remove the ceiling on salaries. Do you have an alternative solution that doesn't have a ceiling to pay rates?

Ending free movement isn't a free market solution, it's a government intervention just like anything else. In fact, it's a form of taxation.

Its neither a government intervention, nor a form of taxation.

There is freedom to move still anywhere you want within our market. We're just not in the Single Market anymore.

Taxation is a government intervention that reduces economic welfare by reducing the choice set available to consumers given their budget constraint. Thanks to Brexit, I have a smaller range of choices available to me. Ergo I have been taxed.

That's like saying being unable to drive at 70mph next to a school is taxation.

Laws are not taxation.

Actually your example is a kind of taxation. If you think about taxes and non-tax restrictions on freedom from first principles from a consumer choice point of view they are functionally equivalent, or at least very similar.
In your example the restriction or tax on drivers can be motivated by externality arguments - by driving at 70mph I create the risk of killing a child outside the school, a risk I may inadequately factor into my decision making from the POV of the child or its parents. The speed limit is an effective and proportionate response that probably increases overall social welfare by reducing the incidence of dead kids.
The question is whether ending FoM, and withdrawing from the EU SM, is a welfare-increasing, proportionate and well targeted response to the problems of labour exploitation that you mention. Since you are resorting to arguments like FoM is the same as slavery, I would deduce that the answer to that question is no.

I've always seen FoM as allowing businesses to get all the benefits but without any of the costs. The Left usually whinge about the Right wanting to privatise the profit and nationalise the losses. That's pretty much what FoM was.

People from Bulgaria were happy to live 6 to a room to earn £8.70 an hour when locally their earnt £2...

Yep, and the rest of us had to take the hit on increased housing costs.

Also, I'd point out that those Eastern Europeans very much "got on their bike", something the Left also don't much like.

kinabalu said:

Northern_Al said:

kinabalu said:

How come the Magnificent Muscly Man is so low in these ratings? Is he not loved by his own?

Yes, I thought the same. We're always told, with some justification, that Boris's lovable rogue persona tickles the fancy of vast swathes of the country. And yet the most ardent Tories in this poll seem not to be as enamoured as the voters. I can only guess that the Tories polled are skewed to the fiscally dry, traditional values branch of the party.

They must have no sense of humour. I mean, how can anybody resist this sort of thing? -

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1445104926431006722?t=1p6lV3D-iT_E417kB2JYwg&s=19

So fortunate we are in these challenging times to have this man at the helm.

He spends a few seconds making a terrible build back batter pun . . . and leftwingers ensure its viewed millions of times sharing his build back better message.

How productive were those few seconds? No wonder he's Prime Minister.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

No I would not, absolutely not

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

I'm actually more worried about the lifeboat crews being locked up than the suffragettes, if only because it's a bit late to worry about the latter.

eek said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

MattW said:

turbotubbs said:

MattW said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I am shocked.

Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc

I'm surprised they actually managed to find 27.

What was the process for this?

Does rather remind me of "nothing done in X months" type of complaints, when the minimal process actually takes X+3 months. Often happens.

The PM says that they asked the hauliers to give them the names of the drivers they wanted visas for and the government would sort it. They provided 127. So far.

So where is the 27 from?

Are we in journos can't count territory? Or just reporting of very early numbers?

5 live this morning said 127

The 27 comes from the front page of today's Times.

So we are in "Times Journos can't count" territory, or "why did we sack all the subeditors?"

Was there a timescale on that. If it is 127 tanker drivers per week, that will fix the London-SE Crisis in fairly short order. Not that it will get reported.

Carnyx said:

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

I'm actually more worried about the lifeboat crews being locked up than the suffragettes, if only because it's a bit late to worry about the latter.

Looking at the sea swell today and the wind speeds my son will answer a shout right now if it comes and put his life on the line to rescue life at sea

I do not see it as something to joke about

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Carnyx said:

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

I'm actually more worried about the lifeboat crews being locked up than the suffragettes, if only because it's a bit late to worry about the latter.

Looking at the sea swell today and the wind speeds my son will answer a shout right now if it comes and put his life on the line to rescue life at sea

I do not see it as something to joke about

I'm not joking about it: actually, quite disturbed it has never been resolved.

Carnyx said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Carnyx said:

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Go on admit it you would have said the same about the Suffragettes.

I'm actually more worried about the lifeboat crews being locked up than the suffragettes, if only because it's a bit late to worry about the latter.

Looking at the sea swell today and the wind speeds my son will answer a shout right now if it comes and put his life on the line to rescue life at sea

I do not see it as something to joke about

I'm not joking about it: actually, quite disturbed it has never been resolved.

It is a nonsense story

bigjohnowls said:

https://twitter.com/JUSTOLBURT/status/1445003792047607820/photo/1

That is very funny @bigjohnowls

Taz said:

Sandpit said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.

The response of the Police and the government has been inept and merely emboldened them. As I said yesterday. They are fanatics. They cannot be reasoned with. Access to their demands and there will be something else and every other fringe group will do the same.

Exactly. If the police don’t get a grip on these demonstrators soon, it probably ends with someone getting killed.

Imagine being on the jury, at the trial of the motorist charged with running over someone who was deliberately blocking the road.

kinabalu said:

How come the Magnificent Muscly Man is so low in these ratings? Is he not loved by his own?

He seems to have a following with the whippersnappers. Imagine going to the barber and asking for a Boris cut?



I foresee many decades ahead for these lads of whining about why cool, sexy, liberal elite Remoaners won’t shag them.

bigjohnowls said:

Sandpit said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Breaking

Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads

They really have lost the plot and their cause

Lock them up Patel

Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.

Not seen them using violence or threatening people.

Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.

Terrorism my arse

The difference is that they are preventing both men and women going about their business and stopped a woman going to see her sick elderly mother and saying they would not let an ambulance through even with a dying patient

They have lost the plot and the public totally