FACT: Since 1997 1.7 million more jobs have been created.
FACT: 1.5 million of them have gone to non British citizens.
FACT: Since 1997 1.3 million jobs in manufacturing have been lost.
FACT: 113,000 more foreign born workers are employed in manufacturing than in 1997.
FACT the number of British people in employment is at its lowest level for a decade.
British jobs for British workers? You're 'avin a giraffe, Mr Brown.
Source: Daily Telegraph & Frank Field MP
20 comments:
Shouldn't it be: British benefits for British Labour voters. Jobs for the rest.
Only 1.3 jobs lost in manufacturing. Well it could have been worse...
Iain, I am not disagreeing with your facts, but out of interest, do you have sources for these?
Yes, I wonder how former industrial areas came to be deprived and how a culture of welfare dependency emerged there. Wow, that was easy!
Thanks to the new skills based immigration system many middle class professionals will soon be losing their jobs and having their slaries cut also.
This will make the super-rich backers of Labour very happy and wealthy.
I thought better of you Iain.
If British people would do these jobs, or had the skills then we wouldn't need immigrants, the simple fact is they are best placed to do many jobs at the market rate.
I know its easy to target those 'dirty foreigners' but the problems are not their fault, they just want the best lives they can get and work to get them rather than being told government will take care of them and they don't need to worry.
Tristan, you have got this completely wrong. I was having a go at Gordon Brown for his laughable claims about British jobs for British workers. It's not a phrase I would ever use as it's patently ridiculous. Or worse.
The government has no real incentive to improve the education system, increase the skills base of the British workforce or reform the benefits system all the time it can rely on a never ending supply of cheaper foreign workers.
The effect of this is that the wages and living standards of the British workforce will keep falling.
This is another outcome of the idiotic obsession with free markets that all the major political parties suffer from.
It's foreign jobs for British workers folks!
All outrageous of course, but what will we do about it after 2010? Are we going to prevent EU workers coming to Britain, as well as making it harder for non-EU workers to come? Are we going to improve British education and training so there are more Britons who can take these jobs? And are we genuinely going to act on the benefits system so that some of the 4 million economically inactive British people get on their bikes and fill these jobs?
Highlighting the problems is easy - suggesting a solution, or more likely several solutions, is always much harder.
I continually encounter Poles in the service industries. They are polite, well-spoken, intelligent and hard-working. No wonder they get the jobs if they are competing with some of the people our 'bog standard comprehensives' turn out.
“Thanks to the new skills based immigration system many middle class professionals will soon be losing their jobs and having their slaries cut also.” – Man in a shed.
This has been happening to those in the IT sector for several years. The home office issues at a rate of over a hundred every working day. I was one of the over 60,000 that were ‘on the bench’ back in 2003-4 when people were being dismissed and replaced. Some had to ‘dig their own graves’ by training their replacement. I had just returned from abroad and resource were short so I ended up bankrupt, homeless and even made suicide attempts. I suffer from serious mental health problems (which I can’t get help for), have not worked since and don’t have any prospect of getting work either despite being highly skilled.
I have BEGGED the DWP for help to get back to work, but they refuse. The Freud report made me sick. He calculates that getting someone back to work on minimum wage is worth over £62,000. I’ve used the same method and calculated that to get me back to work is worth more that £520,000.
I live in daily fear of what this evil government (and the opposition in the unlikely event of ever getting in power) are going to do to me next. This fear is well founded as recent announcements such as eviction or being put on a chain gang picking up dog mess have shown. This looks like my destiny.
But who would you rather employ ?
Hard-working, generally polite Poles, or some of the victims of the shite education system in this country under labour who are thick, lazy, rude, ill-mannered and workshy ? We have created this rod for our own back I'm afraid. Even if we had solid control of our borders, many of these people would still not be employed, as British employers wouldn't touch them. As per your earlier story about hotel staff in Blackpool.
Anonymous at 7:24, do you really think that state of affairs is acceptable? Because I don't. There's no reason why our people should be left to rot on benefits, as clunking fist is doing. They can and should have their aspirations raised by better education, worthwhile jobs and a clear route out of poverty. I can't believe that people are so complacent about the demise of social mobility. This is something the Tories should be screaming about.
Bruce Anderson has consistently expressed a sensible view on the matter, but one searches in vain for any sign that the majority of Tories care about what should be their issue.
asquith - you are bang on the money.
I myself was lucky enough to go to a Grammar school, in a part of the country where they had not been abolished.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of that system, and of the Assisted Places Scheme, Labour has been deeply depressingly disappointing with its much vaunted obsession with 'education, education education'.
I don't really belong on this blog as I don't share the right wing 'winner takes all, devil takes the hindmost' attitude - but I think we can all agree that Labour has been a complete failure if it has made social exclusion even worse than it was when it came into power.
David Bodden said...
“This has been happening to those in the IT sector for several years. ... I was one of the over 60,000 that were ‘on the bench’ back in 2003-4 when people were being dismissed and replaced."
You're mostly right except that it started before then. The stealth tax IR35 has been in force all this century to price the British out of work; coupled with open-door immigration it ensured that thousands of British IT staff have not worked in IT during this time.
Yes, the gainers are NufascistLab rich foreigner backers who get richer by importing the foreigners. All this is perfectly obvious and applauded by the nulab and tory haters of the English.
I thought capitalism thrived on the free movement of labour?
Indeed so, and that was the point I was making. I wasn;t arguing against foreign workers working in Britain. I was pointing out that Gordon Brown seems to think jobs in Britain should be reserved for British workers.
"...Gordon Brown seems to think jobs in Britain should be reserved for British workers."
And so they should. It is the first duty of the government to protect the citizens of the country. That included the opportunity to earn a living. Allowing, or, as this nuLieBore has done, encouraging the displacement of indigenous workers with imports not only contravenes this but does not make economic sense. Most highly skilled people are specialists and cannot pick up any random job once they have been thrown out the career that they have devoted their lives to; employers simply will not have them for a start. We have many thousands of highly skilled people who are unemployed or underemployed wasting away or drawing public funds when they could be contributing to the economy. At the same time money is being siphoned off abroad.
The skills shortage is a myth and most work-permits are issued on fraudulent grounds.
David Bodden said...
"Most highly skilled people are specialists and cannot pick up any random job once they have been thrown out the career that they have devoted their lives to; employers simply will not have them for a start. We have many thousands of highly skilled people who are unemployed or underemployed wasting away or drawing public funds when they could be contributing to the economy. At the same time money is being siphoned off abroad.
The skills shortage is a myth and most work-permits are issued on fraudulent grounds."
Exactly right David but, sadly, that is far too difficult for most tories to understand.
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