Ooops: Britain opens its doors to 3.5 million visitors from eastern Europe

[DodgyAgent]

I agree. The problem is one of wage deflation at the moment.

More and more jobs are now paying minimum wage this is starting to hurt many people and will inevitably feed up through the employment food-chain.
Its not only impacting on White-Van man and shelf stackers. For example, students in London looking for term-time work to pay back tuition fees are now only able to find minimum wage jobs this was not the case a few years ago.

Where have you got this idea that we have a problem with wage deflation?
If we did not have eastern europeans here inflation would have taken off with the public sector sucking out private sector workers to essentially work in non productive jobs.

Remove welfare and sack all the public sector workers who provide no useful function. Put an end to the public sector (for example)IT contracts gravy train. Do this and we would not need any Eastern Europeans at all, we would have plenty of bar staff, fruit pickers and lap dancers.

[Francko]

You have a point Milan, although what you clearly miss is that the UK is leading the EU enlargement project with its openness and not your precious Germans, French and Italians etc. We are the ones who are letting Eastern Europeans work here and we are the ones who are not putting up protection barriers to foreign businesses wanting to invest in UK companies.

That's not quite correct da. In england all the workers from new eastern EU countries have to follow the registration scheme and prove that they have a permanent job for one year. I can admit that the UK might be actually quite relaxed in applying this restriction. However, it's Ireland where the new eastern EU countries people can work freely, and they don't seem to complain so much, nor it created so many problems. So I would argue that as usual problems lie in more deepened roots and this is the recurrent scapegoat.

[NoddY]

...British people have the same freedom as the Poles
and can if so motivated find work else where within the European
Union where rates for their labour and skills may be higher, through
a combination of wages and cost of living.

So why all the complaining ?

Milan.

So what freedom is there when you HAVE to move abroad, when you HAVE to learn other languages. Maybe you like your country of origin. Maybe you want to stay. Maybe your mother is sick, or your child is settled in school. "Flexible labour market" sounds good but what does it mean in reality? What are the implications of masses of transient populations in each urban area, just 'passing through' for a few months or a couple of years. It means people become disconnected with their environment and don't give a $hit. If their 'job' isn't their anchor nor their 'home' what is?

I've known my school friends for 20 years and trust them with my life. It became that way simply because we stayed in the same place for a long time. How could this work in future when parents have to dot around like a blue ar$e fly because they're 'flexible'.

[sasguru]

History shows that it is better, economically, to err on the side of openness and liberalism rather than protectionism.

[DodgyAgent]

So you'd be quite happy then with state owned monopolies such as Gazprom buying up huge chunks of the market as well I take it.

If completely unfettered access to the UK is meant to be an absolute good, then why not simply drop all restrictions on immigration, foreign companies buying everything they want...surely that's the logical conclusion of these arguments...or like many people do you think there has to be limits.

That is not what I said. Gazprom is a political arm of the Russian govt and any attempt that it makes to buy any UK company should be stopped. This is what govts should be doing-they should be policing the rules of business not running services. We are part of the EU and the deal is that our labour markets are open to all. I am not saying that we should open our doors to workers from outside the EU at all. There are business opportunities in all sorts of areas in eastern Europe (from estate agencies, recruitment agencies, IT etc etc). there is nothing to stop us Brits from setting up in Hungary for example.

[DimPrawn]

What will happen if China and India become the richest nations on earth, and proceed to buy up every piece of land, property and company in the UK?

Effectively they will own the UK and control almost every aspect of our lives.

[Francko]

I've known my school friends for 20 years and trust them with my life. It became that way simply because we stayed in the same place for a long time. How could this work in future when parents have to dot around like a blue ar$e fly because they're 'flexible'.

I've known people for 3 months and became a friend for life. This all depends on what is your lifestyle and how you are used to evaluate your time. It's not so bad actually, and pushes you to appreciate every single short period of your life. As a contractor you should be more used to that. It's generally very difficult nowadays that you can live in the same area for all your life. Unfortunately, it's a fact we have to face it. Or better... you can decide to stay in the same place all your life but you have to quit all your career expectations. You are free to choose.

[DodgyAgent]

So what freedom is there when you HAVE to move abroad, when you HAVE to learn other languages. Maybe you like your country of origin. Maybe you want to stay. Maybe your mother is sick, or your child is settled in school. "Flexible labour market" sounds good but what does it mean in reality? What are the implications of masses of transient populations in each urban area, just 'passing through' for a few months or a couple of years. It means people become disconnected with their environment and don't give a $hit. If their 'job' isn't their anchor nor their 'home' what is?

I've known my school friends for 20 years and trust them with my life. It became that way simply because we stayed in the same place for a long time. How could this work in future when parents have to dot around like a blue ar$e fly because they're 'flexible'.

Noddy, you eventually have a very good point, but you are entering a dodgy area of debate when you start using words like "HAVE" to (as in being forced).
The Poles are the very people about who you speak. they are faced with poverty or learning English and getting themselves over here. (The irony is that their poverty was the effect of protectionism under their previous political regime) The effect that this has is that they are far better for it. Had they been able to enjoy a German style welfare state they could have sat eat home, not worked and been of no use whatsoever either to themselves or to society.

The point you made about transient communities is a good one. Bear in mind that most people want to settle somewhere and that they are only "transient" either through extreme hardship or because they dont have families or jobs close to where they wish to settle.

If you want the right to inbreed and only communicate with your next door neighbour then you have to earn that right.

[The Lone Gunman]

I have said this a lot, the big problem is that production has been globalised but consumers are fettered by governments (and global companies) trying to protect their markets.

Manufacturers are trying to drive down production cost not for the benefit of the consumer but for the benefit of the shareholder.
Cars being produced cheaper abroad will not reduce the cost of the car in the UK, probably the inverse using delivery and left hand drive as an excuse to push up the price.

I am sure the bra wars fiasco would have had the retailer screaming had the proposal been that the consumer could import direct from china.

Globalisation has so many risks that some form of protectionism needs looking at.

[sasguru]

What will happen if China and India become the richest nations on earth, and proceed to buy up every piece of land, property and company in the UK?

Effectively they will own the UK and control almost every aspect of our lives.

That would only happen if everyone in the UK lost every ounce of nous, enterprise and hard work. In that case our fate would be richly deserved and we could have no complaints.