Reply to: Immigration programme on telly last night

[TimberWolf]

I'm sure the immigrants did do similar jobs elsewhere, but they had one of the immigrants who had earnt £178 in one day. The picking shifts were standard 8 hour ones in believe which means he was pulling in over £22/hour.

The farmer had a set price he was paying for a kilo of picked produce, if you want to make money you work harder and faster, it's simple. What they showed of the brits was mainly them whinging and sitting around smoking a fag, it's no wonder they didn't earn much.

I would agree that it's not a full time career unless you move around the place looking for different harvests in different seasons, but it's not low paid work, in my opinion the farmer was definetly paying a fair wage.

I agree, £22/hour would be exceptionally good money - 4 or 5 times the amount the Brits earned before being topped up to NMW I believe. That calculation is as you say is based on an assumption of an 8 hour day, which is I expect where one error lies, I'm not going to rewatch the video to find out, or indeed would not expect to make generalisations based on one biased and unrepresentative programme. I've worked in these places of that sort and the reality is the vast majority of people would be earning minimum wage or less and jacking the job in after a short time, including the immigrants. Then they just get more people in. Of course the economics of working on NMW do work out differently for migrants for various reasons.

The programme was mass immigration propaganda designed to make you feel as you do.

[norrahe]

I missed the programme but saw the follow up piece on Newsnight.
More interesting was the pack of lies Phil Woolas was spouting about student visas, anyone who has passed through East London lately will see that about 70% of people on the station platforms are "students" from the Indian subcontinent, with most of the rest recently arrived from Africa.
While East London has been a cosmopolitan and diverse place for many years, the rapid change in demographics has become quite stark in recent years.
It doesn't quite fit in with Phil Woolas's rosy view with his highly skilled migrant points system bollocks. The man is in absolute denial, at least publicly.

If by the "east end" you are referring to the Mile end/Stepney/Bow area, then the student factor will be down to the presence of Queen Mary Uni, attendees of which are very much of the international ilk.

But there are many who exploit the student visa entry for their own gain.

The government are very much in denial about this( and a lot of other things) and the levels of immigration, apparently the id cards are going to solve everything.

[Ardesco]

Because Britain is ******* expensive? I couldn't afford to live on NMW, my family would need to be in heavily subsidised council accommodation before I could even entertain the idea.

Sorry but what is your point here?

I say that the lazy feckers on benefits getting stuff paid for them should get a job on minimum wage rather than thinking they are owed a much better wage/easier job and you come back with this?

I would have real problems on NMW, but if that was all that was on offer I would take it rather than sit around doing feck all and whining about immigrants stealing my job.

[Ardesco]

A lot of Brits do work for minimum wage. Its a bit different working in a shop though, where chances are you'd live long enough to retire.

There was only 6 weeks picking work at the farm, so the immigrants likely do similar picking jobs elsewhere and might therefore be expected to be faster to get up to speed. Unless you are pretty young, I doubt you'd get anywhere near £10/hour.

I'm more in the 'hang the farmer by his thumbs' camp.

I'm sure the immigrants did do similar jobs elsewhere, but they had one of the immigrants who had earnt £178 in one day. The picking shifts were standard 8 hour ones in believe which means he was pulling in over £22/hour.

The farmer had a set price he was paying for a kilo of picked produce, if you want to make money you work harder and faster, it's simple. What they showed of the brits was mainly them whinging and sitting around smoking a fag, it's no wonder they didn't earn much.

I would agree that it's not a full time career unless you move around the place looking for different harvests in different seasons, but it's not low paid work, in my opinion the farmer was definetly paying a fair wage.

[xoggoth]

Didn't see it but assuming the Brits were useless the solution is surely to reform the welfare system. If the system is not changed then migrants are only going to end up just as lazy.

If long term unemployed do not have the discipline to go to work every day the state should impose it and make them do something socially useful. Doing what they want to do with their day should not be an option.

A sensible reform of rules would help too. Who is going to bother if everything they earn is taken off their benefits and they have to jump through hoops to get back into the system again if the job ends? I wouldn't.

PS Like most of them gingerjedi. What was Brownstuff? Student union, student summit else, reporter for a year or two, MP. Darling, although he does seem among the saner ones now, was a rabid Trotskiest.

[gingerjedi]

Woolas joined the Labour Party at the age of 16 and became involved in student politics through the Anti-Nazi League. Before entering Parliament, he was President of the National Union of Students from 1984-6 and Head of Communications at the GMB trade union (1991-7) and previously a television producer for the BBC (on Newsnight) from 1988-90 and ITN (Channel 4 News) from 1990-1.

Not many proper jobs there Phil, a full on 'do as I say' elitist if ever I saw one.

[GreenerGrass]

I missed the programme but saw the follow up piece on Newsnight.
More interesting was the pack of lies Phil Woolas was spouting about student visas, anyone who has passed through East London lately will see that about 70% of people on the station platforms are "students" from the Indian subcontinent, with most of the rest recently arrived from Africa.
While East London has been a cosmopolitan and diverse place for many years, the rapid change in demographics has become quite stark in recent years.
It doesn't quite fit in with Phil Woolas's rosy view with his highly skilled migrant points system bollocks. The man is in absolute denial, at least publicly.

[Churchill]

I blame the supermarkets

It wouldn't have happened under the Tories!!!
(I think...)

[Peoplesoft bloke]

A lot of Brits do work for minimum wage. Its a bit different working in a shop though, where chances are you'd live long enough to retire.

There was only 6 weeks picking work at the farm, so the immigrants likely do similar picking jobs elsewhere and might therefore be expected to be faster to get up to speed. Unless you are pretty young, I doubt you'd get anywhere near £10/hour.

I'm more in the 'hang the farmer by his thumbs' camp.

I blame the supermarkets

[TimberWolf]

My first job in the UK was perl programming for £7/hour, that was back in 1999, I was pretty chuffed at the time, even though I wasn't pleased at having to pay BT bloody £100+ per month for offpeak dial up internet (I was careful not to use it too much at the time)

Were you downloading the internet?

[AtW]

His immigrants were earning about £10/hour because of the speed they worked, whereas the Brits they brought in couldn't pick enough to cover minimum wage so the farmer was having to top up their wage to minimum wage.

My first job in the UK was perl programming for £7/hour, that was back in 1999, I was pretty chuffed at the time, even though I wasn't pleased at having to pay BT bloody £100+ per month for offpeak dial up internet (I was careful not to use it too much at the time)

[gingerjedi]

I think the question that needs to be asked is why do unemployed brits not want to work for minimum wage?

Because Britain is ******* expensive? I couldn't afford to live on NMW, my family would need to be in heavily subsidised council accommodation before I could even entertain the idea.

Not everyone who's struggling to get by lives on a council estate, many struggle to pay mortgages on relatively low wages without complaining. Ultimately migrants are helping Tesco make billions in profit, they are not helping people who just want a honest days pay for an honest days work.

There is nothing physically different between eastern Europeans and British people, they just have different motivations. I for one know my attitude and work ethic is directly proportional to the rate on offer, these people are no different.

[TimberWolf]

To be honest I have to side with the farmer over the asparagus pickers. His immigrants were earning about £10/hour because of the speed they worked, whereas the Brits they brought in couldn't pick enough to cover minimum wage so the farmer was having to top up their wage to minimum wage. If all his workers were like the three muppets they got in to pick asparagus the cost price of his asparagus would probably double, and we all know the supermarket will tell him to flip off and go elsewhere to buy it.

He was questioned about the wage situation and his response was along the lines of:

"Why should I have to increase the money I pay to try and tempt somebody who doesn't want to work on my fields into doing so when I can find lots of people who want to do the job?"

Lets face it £10/hour is a pretty bloody good wage for unskilled labour, hell I would be up for that whilst stuck on the bench, the sad thing about this program is that all it has done is reinforce the farmers view that brits are bloody useless as crop pickers and the chances of him ever employing some now are probably non-existent.

Now I'm sure that the unemployed guys they picked were specifically picked because they had a chip on their shoulder about immigrant workers, and at least half of them would have been picked to fail so that they could make some "good TV". But I have to say i was cringing listening to half of the stuff they were coming out with.

The sad thing to take from this is that all of these employers were paying at least minimum wage, but they were having problems finding UK workers who were either competent, or wanted to work for minimum wage. I think the question that needs to be asked is why do unemployed brits not want to work for minimum wage? (Although you would need to get some figures from the job centre to find out how many british CV's are being put forward for these minimum wage jobs to find out if this is true)

A lot of Brits do work for minimum wage. Its a bit different working in a shop though, where chances are you'd live long enough to retire.

There was only 6 weeks picking work at the farm, so the immigrants likely do similar picking jobs elsewhere and might therefore be expected to be faster to get up to speed. Unless you are pretty young, I doubt you'd get anywhere near £10/hour.

I'm more in the 'hang the farmer by his thumbs' camp.

[Ardesco]

To be honest I have to side with the farmer over the asparagus pickers. His immigrants were earning about £10/hour because of the speed they worked, whereas the Brits they brought in couldn't pick enough to cover minimum wage so the farmer was having to top up their wage to minimum wage. If all his workers were like the three muppets they got in to pick asparagus the cost price of his asparagus would probably double, and we all know the supermarket will tell him to feck off and go elsewhere to buy it.

He was questioned about the wage situation and his response was along the lines of:

"Why should I have to increase the money I pay to try and tempt somebody who doesn't want to work on my fields into doing so when I can find lots of people who want to do the job?"

Lets face it £10/hour is a pretty bloody good wage for unskilled labour, hell I would be up for that whilst stuck on the bench, the sad thing about this program is that all it has done is reinforce the farmers view that brits are bloody useless as crop pickers and the chances of him ever employing some now are probably non-existent.

Now I'm sure that the unemployed guys they picked were specifically picked because they had a chip on their shoulder about immigrant workers, and at least half of them would have been picked to fail so that they could make some "good TV". But I have to say i was cringing listening to half of the stuff they were coming out with.

The sad thing to take from this is that all of these employers were paying at least minimum wage, but they were having problems finding UK workers who were either competent, or wanted to work for minimum wage. I think the question that needs to be asked is why do unemployed brits not want to work for minimum wage? (Although you would need to get some figures from the job centre to find out how many british CV's are being put forward for these minimum wage jobs to find out if this is true)

[NoddY]

A more serious problem is the de-mechanisation caused by the availability of cheap labour. It suffocates innovation.

I suppose it's only a problem if you believe that people are capable of more than just picking vegetables.

There was a case of shellfish harvested in the North Sea, bypassing a fully operational automated shelling facility in Yorkshire, exported to the Far East to be manually shelled and then imported back into the UK.