I have promised to do whatever it takes to help Nigel Farage’s Ukip emerge the winner

[OwlHoot]

It's not going backwards, is it, since the hand wash is more expensive and far better for your paintwork than a machine? Plus you have your interior cleaned.
It's just an additional service.

FFS, we do gather morons on this forum.

Fair points, but in my experience a significant reason for not using an automated carwash is that the perishing thing has more often than not broken down. So evidently there is a shortage of qualified carwash repair engineers.

[VectraMan]

That's a good point.
20 years ago when you wanted to get your car washed you'd put it through "the car wash", a machine.
Nowadays these machines are being replaced by people (I presume they are low-paid immigrants) to wash your car by hand.
I think is is a sad indictment on society that we are going backwards in this way. IMHO.

20 years ago people were still saying about how machines and computers were taking away jobs from working men. You don't hear that much these days.

All these hand car washes have sprung up where there was nothing before, so clearly they're not taking anyone else's jobs. What's a sad indictment on society is that it's taken immigrants to see the oppurtunity; British workers could have been filling that gap in the market for decades.

[Mich the Tester]

What's a sad indictment on society is that it's taken immigrants to see the oppurtunity; British workers could have been filling that gap in the market for decades.

[speling bee]

20 years ago people were still saying about how machines and computers were taking away jobs from working men. You don't hear that much these days.

All these hand car washes have sprung up where there was nothing before, so clearly they're not taking anyone else's jobs. What's a sad indictment on society is that it's taken immigrants to see the oppurtunity; British workers could have been filling that gap in the market for decades.

In many cases, it is much cheaper for businesses to rely on zero hour / casual labour who can be laid off and made the responsibility of the state when demand decreases, rather than to invest in machinery, which remains a fixed cost as demand fluctuates.

[vetran]

In many cases, it is much cheaper for businesses to rely on zero hour / casual labour who can be laid off and made the responsibility of the state when demand decreases, rather than to invest in machinery, which remains a fixed cost as demand fluctuates.

Indeed well put.

[DodgyAgent]

Just go to an Asda or Tesco superstore during a working day if you want to see who they are.

Are there any in Waitrose for us to look down at?

[speling bee]

Are there any in Waitrose for us to look down at?

Qu'ils mangent:

[Smartie]

Quote Originally Posted by craig1
I remember being in Dortmund with the army in the late 80s and the Germans were whining persistently about British labourers coming over and underpricing the natives for the same sort of work that the Poles are doing here now. I still have the occasional wry smile at Daily Mail articles about furriners coming over here, taking our jobs and not even being able to speak the language when that's what we happily did for years, almost mirror translations of the German newspapers in the 80s. There don't seem to be the numbers of people willing or able to do the same these days in going from Britain abroad hunting for low-end work.

Quite. What happened to the more enterprising generation of the 80s?
It's simple - the bottom feeders of society had and have more children than the striving - there's a whole underclass now who are in effect unemployable.
And that's why we have shortages in labour even after mass immigration.

Not sure about more enterprising. What happened then was that Thatcher destroyed all the industries in the North (with some help from the unions of course) resulting in massive unemployment. That's why British labourers were in Germany.
These days, there's a fair bit of work in London and if observant you will notice a variety of northern accents attached to groups of overall-clad men in some of the more affordable pubs and B&B's.
There's also some minimum wage call centre work for those with trusted Northern accents. These sprang up fifteen or twenty years after the industries were buried and provide jobs for some.

The people that you so charmingly referred to as 'bottom feeders' are however often the third generation product of what Thatcher did to the hard working working class. There was simply no work for many and unfortunately, the culture of not working has persisted and been ingrained in later generations.

[vetran]

yeah it was all Thatch's fault..

Ten myths about Margaret Thatcher exploded – Telegraph Blogs

Fairly balanced report on her.

More pits closed before she arrived than under her. Manufacturing was a mess etc. But she did a few bad things.

[Mich the Tester]

Manufacturing was a mess etc.

Indeed, but it is everyone's inalienable right to blame Maggiefatcha for the mess that British managers and trade union leaders had made of British industry before she came to power, innit. It woz Maggiefatcha wot stuffed an oily rag in the gearbox of my dad's Rovah before it fell off the production line, it woz Maggiefatcha wot called a strike at Longbridge while the conveyors were still running and it woz Maggiefatcha wot left unpainted car bodies out in the rain for the whole weekend and then covered the rust with vinyl.