UKC

A great news story this morning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24813467

I wonder how our less immigrant-positive press are going to spin that one...

In reply to Tall Clare: Nearly choked on my cornflakes this morning at the thought of how our DM/Express brethren are going to report this.

In reply to lummox: Depends which part of the figures you emphasise, doesn't it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487501/How-migrants-outside-Europe... .

The Mail have concentrated on the overall figure for all immigrants, while the BBC story emphasises the figure for immigrants who arrived after 1999. Not that I'm sympathising with the Mail, you understand.

In reply to John2:

That's the trouble with figures - it seems pretty easy to make them say what you want them to say. I just felt cheered by there being an immigrant-positive story.

In reply to Tall Clare:


What else would you expect from a story in the Guardian-BBC? The conclusion was pre-determined.

In reply to John2: sorry- I won't click on that site but will see if I can find another source- ta for the link though.

In reply to Tall Clare:


Chose the figures which suit them.
Or take the "come over here and take our jobs" line.
Or ask for a more detailed breakdown to separate out the highly paid from others.

In reply to Simon4:

Or just rant about the beeb and the Guardian and conflate the two.

In reply to dissonance: quote from frothing Simon elsewhere :

I would say it is doing a bit more than creeping, it completely dominates some people, to the point where their attitude to people who disagree with them is as vicious as any racist views.

Which is pretty unfortunate, as some issues are long term and inherently intractable, and just don't have simple pat answers. Trying to use partial or even entire failures at things that are important but are very difficult to get right, just because "the other side" is currently trying is both tribal and childish.

In reply to John2:

I wonder how many of the non-EU immigrants are from Commonwealth countries?

In reply to Tall Clare:

Nothing new here. Bloody immigrants they come here and pay more tax on average than brits, pick all the fruit most brits are too lazy to pick, fill the remaining high tech jobs when we run out of bright brits with the right skills, keep our university systems afloat by studying here and provide a massive boost to local ecomomies, look after their families better on average than brits, commit less crime on average than brits.... the list goes on and on.

In reply to Tall Clare:
I'd be interested to see a similar study of the "net contribution" of BNP members, or EDL supporters. (The shouty racist ones, not the twinkly disco ones.)

In reply to Offwidth:

They'll be playing football for England before you can say "boo" as well

In reply to deepsoup:


You get twinkly disco racists? This I must see...

In reply to Offwidth:

Yes but other than- Bloody immigrants they come here and pay more tax on average than brits, pick all the fruit most brits are too lazy to pick, fill the remaining high tech jobs when we run out of bright brits with the right skills, keep our university systems afloat by studying here and provide a massive boost to local ecomomies, look after their families better on average than brits, commit less crime on average than brits.... What have immigrants ever done for us?

In reply to Tall Clare: no Clare, your title needs to be reworded to European immigration. It's also ok to say they're an economic boost for the country. But where do we expect immigrants / future immigrants to live? The Uk already has a housing issue and immigration will only make it worse; unless, we start to building on green fields and for many people, they wouldn't like this.

In reply to Simon4:

I read about it in that handwringing left wing lentilfest that is the Daily Telegraph. Apparently EU migrants are claiming higher levels of working tax credits and claiming less per capita in benefits than UK unemployed. Seems the Conservative Party supports the findings.

That still leaves you the brown ones to froth about.

In reply to Oliiver:

Ooo, haven't seen you around for a while.

Perhaps we could shuffle some of the more feckless resident population off to make more room?

In reply to Tall Clare: no way Clare. My father is MD for a house building company and more immigration is a ++ economic boost. However, this means for many, higher house prices and less desirable houses e.g. new builds - because more houses on smaller land = bonus for growing population.

In reply to Tall Clare:

A while back there was a story about how someone had asked the government (in a written question to the home secretary or somesuch) about how many of the x thousand immigrants in that year were claiming benefit and the answer was something like four.

And two of those were as a result of being run over or having an accident in some way and were now on disability benefit.

In reply to Tall Clare: I guess the question is, would all of these Brits on benefits and social housing be in a better position if we had less immigrants coming here with a good work ethic and happy to house share.

No doubt they are good for our economy, but are they good for the incumbents?

I don't know the answer to that...just adding to the debate

In reply to Oliiver:

So European Immigration is good.. outside the EU bad?

But coming from outside the EU is tightly controlled, speak to anyone who has been through the process.

Re the housing.. thats why the EU is so important, reduce the want to emigrate, a more level playing field. Many immigrants return pretty soon anyway, gress is greener, hostility, lack of jobs, missing family.

In reply to Tall Clare:
Stats are stats. You pick your sample, your time frame etc and you can skew them any way you want, as will no doubt be proved by the coverage. However, I don't think anyone with two grey cells to rub together doubts that some migrants make a net contribution and others represent a net drain. The question that excercises most sensible people is how do you reduce the second group, assuming you believe in the principle of controls in the first place. It's hardly a radical approach and has been operated by the US, NZ, Oz and no doubt other countries for years.

In reply to John Rushby:

You would think the report in the OP allowed for tax credits?

There was a story yesterday about a Czech gang who managed to defraud £750,000 in 2 years off the tax credit system and who nearly got another £500,000. But the local paper is full of comments from Czechs saying they are not Czechs, they're gypsies with Czech passports.

Although, if you removed the fraudulent claims perhaps they'd be even less likely to be on benefits?

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

We have a principle of control....

We do not have within the EU.. we knew that when we signed up... Europe without borders.

In fact we have an almost identical system to NZ and Australia.. where free movement between the countries is very similar, just not from outside them.

In reply to IainRUK: Ian, my left wing buddy. Firstly, i'm against the EU, not immigration. The issue with the EU is we can't control who migrates here, whereas, with the rest of the world we do. So potentially, rather than immigrants coming here on merit, they come here because we can't stop them.

In reply to IainRUK:
True. It's part of the cost/benefit analysis of EU membership. Since you're in Germany and I'm off to work in Spain this winter I assume we can both live with it.

In reply to Oliiver: I wouldn't say I'm left wing.. very much central if slightly left of central.. but I'm just pro migration.. hardly surprising..

Yet this shows migrants from within the EU are a benefit. But pump money into the likes of Poland, strengthen the currencies, promote trade, and you improve their life and reduce the want to leave. Thats basically the point of the EU to create a level Europe.

In reply to lummox:

I also nearly choked when I read this in the article :-

"Of course, the more you earn, the more you pay in taxes."

Aye right ! (if the chose to pay, if you believe the reports, most of the really high earners choos not to tay their tax, and just avoid it.

In reply to IainRUK: Most people are pro migration in the context of applying for a job in a foreign country, getting it and moving there.

But the concept of migration where deciding to just turn up at the border with no job, and wing it from there is when a lot of people become less pro and more anti.

If you want a level Europe, then the laws of physics would suggest that the Germanys and Frances and UKs will have to fall in quality of living standards to meet the rising standards of Eastern and Southern Europe as the wealth is redistributed.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

What do the laws of physics have to do with living standards?

In reply to Tall Clare:

Well it's refreshing to see some evidence in this debate. I am myself an EU immigrant and the atmosphere is definitely getting more and more hostile for us these days.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Fair do. However,

charity begins at home.

In reply to RomTheBear:

Its pretty horrific in NE Germany too.. not by all, by a minority, but a vocal nasty minority. I think the UK is similar, I'd hope so anyway. But here you can think it is far more common than it is because of how vocal it is..

In reply to Jim Fraser:

No. Charity SHOULD begin where it's needed most.

In reply to tony: It was a glib prod at kinetic exchange models of wealth distribution

In reply to IainRUK:

We always had the nasty minority in the UK, but nobody cared, the problem is that now in the UK the belief that EU immigrants are abusing the benefit system has become political mainstream because it gets vote from UKIP, even when basically the near totality of the evidence shows the opposite.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Theyre all welcome

"As Long as i can have a go at the Greeks. Coming over here Taking our jobs and Stealing our women. They Invented gayness"

In reply to GrahamD:

They're already playing rugby for us, thank goodness!

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:

No. Where it is most needed, it will probably be ineffective. Somalia for instance.

A lot of effort is need in health care and social problems in India but I am glad to observe that aid to India is at an end. I have no desire to fund their Mars mission.

Look around and observe what can be done at the end of the street to improve education, provide productive work and relieve poverty. Then you end up with a population who are more capable of helping solve the rest of the world's problems.

Note that the immigrants described in this report are younger and better educated than the average Brit so it's not rocket science to work out that they can get a job and pay taxes. Note also that Europeans make a far more substantial contribution that others. This is partly because they are free of the mass of restrictive bureaucratic b00lsh1t that non-EEA immigrants have to put up with but also because European countries generally tend to develop the eduction and skills of their populations.

In reply to Tall Clare: I don't know about you but wages have been driven down in my industry and the construction sector ... Hurrah , I hope that makes you feel all cosy and warm.

In reply to muppetfilter: I'm sympathetic to everyone whose standard of living is suffering, but wages are being pinned back in most job sectors - including office jobs. Being more competitive and innovative as an economy is the only way that's going to slow down or reverse.

One day, historians of the future will look at closed borders between countries in the same way that we look at the restrictions on movement in places like the Soviet Union...

In reply to Oliiver:

And if you'd read the story you'd see that it is the EU migrants who actually deliver the biggest contribution to the economy.

In reply to andrewmcleod:

Agreed. Our way of life has moved beyond national borders.

In reply to Hephaestus: yeah, but we can only accept x amount of migrants. We should decline more EU migrants and accept more migrants from e.g. BRIC countries.

In reply to Oliiver: What's x? Why does there have to be a limit? Why favour one group of countries over another? Why have inconsistent regulations for people who are facing the same or similar circumstances?

In reply to Oliiver:

Youre 16 bud. Its just not right to Sound like William plague or IBS at your age.

Go out, meet girls, or boys, play music your parents hate, Drink, smoke, Kick against the world, cut Loose, start a riot.

keep up the charity work Though

7;^P

In reply to Oliiver:

Why?

In reply to muppetfilter:

Wages have also been driven down in other sectors where the immigrant workforce is low. Blaming immigrants is what the senior management class like to see as it lets them off the hook. The UK has rapidly moved up to a position challenging the US on the gap between the highest and lowest paid; being more European would reverse this trend, not make things worse.

In reply to Offwidth:
That's fair enough, but wages in the construction sector were being driven down by the availability of migrant workers before all the other sectors got hit by the recession / credit crash. It's not the migrants fault, they just wanted to work hard for a better life, but it hit UK building tradesmen quite hard, quite early.

In reply to Offwidth:

Correct.

Maybe the not so senior though.

In reply to teflonpete: This is still mainly due to the way we failed to provide fair protections (compared to our EU partners) to our workforce as we pushed forward our free market ideals (under labour as much as the current government). Resenting immigrants for a system that encouraged them to come and compete, and that companies and individuals exploited to save money, is illogical at best. All the main parties were culpable in this except UKIP (who will risk trade with the EU by going too far the other way).

In reply to muppetfilter:

Complain about capitalism then, as it's that that's making work shitter, not migrants.

In reply to anyone

I'm going to put a different perspective across. Take Japan as an example where immigration has been nowhere near the level of the UK. I would argue that social cohesion is much greater there than the UK and much of this stems from the lack of immigration.

In reply to SARS: Do you think it is comparable?

Japans neighbours aren't exactly their big fans.. China/North Korea..

In Europe we have countries what 10 miles away..

I think Europe is far FAR more cohesive than far east Asia.

In reply to IainRUK:

Japanese neighbours would go to Japan in a shot regardless. Why? The same reason Polish come here - better jobs, more money. The difference is the Japanese don't allow it.

In reply to IainRUK:

I also don't think Europe is cohesive at all. I have European colleagues and there is no doubt in my mind that there is a large cultural gap. Not just between Brits and (mainland) Europeans but between all the Europeans.

In reply to SARS: I don't know.. I'm not going to argue with you.. I just didn't think it was comparable.. Europe has cliques.. where I am is VERY anti-immigrant... but this area was Hitlers area these guys loved im and the Neo Nazi's are still dominant.

But the rest is very open from France, UK, Austria, Switzerland, Italy... there is still an anti-polish atmosphere..

But Its a huge area a lot of very disparate people.

In reply to SARS: Okay, how is Japan more socially cohesive, and how is that linked to immigration?

In reply to Tall Clare:

This is a good article.

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timwigmore/100244413/the-immigration-debate-everyone-ignores-the-inconvenient-facts/

But it's also not the full story. Hidden away on page 41 of the Centre for Research and Analysis Migration's report – and something which the press release conspicuously ignores – were these figures. From 1995-2011 all non-EEA immigrants (rather than just the new arrivals) took £104 billion, in 2011 prices, more from the state than they brought it in tax revenues. The ratio of state revenue to state expenditure from non-EEA immigrants was 0.864 – that is, the state got £8.64 back for every £10 it spent on non-EEA immigrants. By way of comparison, the figure was £9.26 for native Britons (not my phrase). There is an element of crudeness in the figures, of course – note that it includes all immigrants' children, even those born in Britain. And 23 per cent of state spending is fixed – it doesn't vary if population grows, so a higher population will spread the load around more evenly. Yet a report into a subject as emotive as immigration cannot airbrush out facts just because they are inconvenient: something both sides are often guilty of.
Still, the media isn't obliged to just rewrite the press releases. Nothing stops them from scrutinising what's going on. We too often see reports quite clearly designed with a particular angle in mind reported by the media as fact. Those opposed to immigration constantly cite the number of immigrants on benefits without contextualising the figure – pointing out that immigrants are more likely to be in work and less likely to be on benefits than natives. The Countryside Alliance recently commissioned a poll on how voters were ditching the Tories for Ukip – but when my colleague Tim Bale asked them how they conducted their poll, they didn't get back to him. By then, of course, it had already been reported unquestionably. Mission accomplished.

In reply to Hephaestus:

It's linked to immigration through many ways: common language and cultural affinity, education, income and economic status.

Japan is more cohesive than the UK as evidenced in the way it outperforms in all the above (eg income equality). In fact some research puts the UK at the bottom of the list in terms of socially cohesive societies and Japan at the top.

In reply to Tall Clare:

The problem is you can spin the figures either way. From the article:

Immigrants who arrived after 1999 were 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than UK natives in the period 2000-2011

What are they comparing? A fit 20 something recent immigrant is less likely to claim benefits than a retired 80 year old with numerous medical problems? That's not exactly a surprise. Obviously a group of predominantly young, employed adults will be net contributors in comparison to the population as a whole, regardless of nationality.

In reply to Ridge:

I haven't read the report, but I would hope that some age adjusting was done to ensure similar gad groups are being compared.

In reply to SARS: Japan's population is 127 million, it's one of the densest populations on the planet....the Uk has 65 million people.
The Japanise tend to stay in Japan, where as a larger percentage of the British population have a tendency to move abroad, either as immigrants to a large selection of countries, or just to work temporarily.....I've personally worked in 7 different countries.....it seems that it's mainly just the small minded "homies" in Britain who are the loudest objectors.

In reply to SARS: Seems Japan does have quite a few immigrants, even though they have a large population....actually, Japan's population is expected to decline very dramatically and it is expected that immigrants will be required to make up the short fall.....
Foreign citizens in Japan:
More than 2.5 million (potentially higher because of undocumented migrants) foreigners live in Japan. The number grew by 14.9% in five years. The two largest sources of foreign citizens in Japan are 0.53 million North and South Koreans and 0.67 million Chinese followed by smaller numbers of Filipinos and Brazilians. Other nationalities include: Americans, Canadians, Australians, British, Indonesians, Thais, South Africans, Nigerians, Iranians, Russians, Turks, Indians.
Historically, the largest number of foreign citizens in Japan were Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry. In recent years Korean-born Koreans have come to outnumber Japanese-born Koreans and Koreans whether foreign or Japan-born are now substantially outnumbered by Chinese. Indeed, if only foreign-born foreign nationals are considered, the long term foreign resident population of Japan can justifiably described as "predominantly Chinese."

In reply to Tall Clare: In reply to Tall Clare: Quote.....Emigration was an important feature of British society in the 19th century. Between 1815 and 1930 around 11.4 million people emigrated from Britain and 7.3 million from Ireland. Estimates show that by the end of the 20th century some 300 million people of British and Irish descent were permanently settled around the globe. Today, at least 5.5 million UK-born people live abroad, mainly in Australia, Spain, the United States and Canada....to a lesser extent they live and work in virtually every country on the planet....so I guess it's ok to be an immigrant if you're a good old boy or gal from the UK.

In reply to lynx3555:

It would presumably also be rather messy if they were all told to 'go home' and 5.5 million people turned up at Dover docks.

In reply to Offwidth:

It is an interesting subject, this is worth a read, very even handed.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloody-Foreigners-Story-Immigration-Britain/dp/0349...

In reply to Tall Clare: We should close the doors and weld them shut. There's no such thing as a fish and chip shop anymore; it's always a Chinese one.

In reply to SARS:
Japan is a very male dominated society, you do not see many women in decent jobs.

In reply to Ridge:
I must admit to being a bit sceptical about these figures. Are they for example less likely to recieve state benefits as they cannot claim them anyway.

In reply to Postmanpat:
>

Erm, isn't this the stat that the Mail led on in its report? So hardly ignored by the media.

Interestingly the graph of contributions to the economy shows the non-EEA immigrants ratio of revenue to expenditure pretty much maps those of native born Britons, but slightly lower (the BBC story shows these). Not having read the report, I'm thinking this is probably due to immigrants having slightly larger families (already well documented) and the cost of education being factored into this report.

So basically, we have been spending a slightly higher proportion of govt spending on teaching the children of immigrants, many British born. We also know that these kids tend to be better educated and more likely to get a degree that native-born Britons.

Given the much-trumpeted skills gap and decline in the number of workers as our population ages, this would seem to be exactly what we need.

In reply to neilh:

EU immigrants are entitled to the same benefits as UK born as long as they are a resident. The same is true for UK citizens living in other EU countries for example. It a general principle that you cannot be discriminated on grounds of nationality in the EU.
I think the main reason that they are a lot less likely to claim benefit is that most of them don't come to the UK unless they already have a marketable skill, and when they don't find a job they usually return home or other EU country after a while.

However most categories of non-EU immigrants have access to pretty much none of the "standards" benefits for their first two years in the UK. Anyway these days unless you are a refugee you are very unlikely to be able to stay in the UK if you are non EU, don't have a spouse who can support you, not a student, and in a situation where you might be able to claim benefit.

In reply to seankenny:


Or should we be looking to improve the educational standard of our native-born Britons so that they are as likely as the children of immigrants to get degrees and fill the much-trumpeted skills gap?

My problem isn't that children of immigrants (I am one myself) perform well in education, it is that we seem, as a society, to be happy to turn our backs on our own younger generation as we can just brain and bicep drain other countries to keep our pensions paid.

In reply to lynx3555: Japan needs immigrants, adult nappies now outsell baby nappies in Japan. They have an ageing demographic crisis

In reply to seankenny:
Well clearly not since it was a section taken from the Telegraph comment I linked to!!!

In reply to Postmanpat:

I'm pretty certain the £104bn fig was used in the Mail...

In reply to teflonpete:


Clearly, yes, no one is really arguing for a less well-educated workforce are they? It's not an either/or. But if I'm head of the Difficult Problems Division at EnormoCorp and I need a new Widget Analyst, do I wait for one to be trained up in 10 years or hire one tomorrow, even if they are from India?



The cynic in me says we partly do this because young people vote less and therefore are of less worth to politicians.

A campaign of concerned pensioners asking for their own generous benefits to be cut so funds could go to helping their grandchildren's generation would possibly change this.

In reply to Jamie B:

The English Disco Lovers. They turned up at an EDL march to shoot their first video

youtube.com/watch?v=sYPpbfs5Vn4&

In reply to seankenny:

I meant clearly not ignored by the media!

In reply to Postmanpat:

I feel the meaning has been drained from this exchange

In reply to seankenny:

On that we can agree

In reply to Postmanpat:

Ends with a whimper, not a bang.

In reply to seankenny:



No, YOU should have been training one up over the last 5 years!

There lies the problem with the whole system. We train young people to pass GCSEs and the ones who can afford it or are prepared to start their working lives with a yoke of debt go on to university. So, great, we have a generation clutching pieces of paper with numbers on them but no work experience and no vocational training. Instead of vocational training, what do we do? We join a system that lets companies hire immigrants who have received vocational training and have work experience in their parent country because we don't have to spend any time or money training them. We then get reporters in the Guardian and the BBC writing stories about how wonderful immigrants are and what a feckless load of shite our own young working generation are. Maybe if they'd had an opportunity of an apprenticeship or vocational training they might not be drawing benefits.

In reply to RomTheBear:
It would be interesting to see some form of analysis showing a comparison with France,Germany, Italy and Spain about benefit entitlements if you were an EU citizen working and not born there. I believe that France has some shockers about medical/hospital benefits whereyou have not contributed to the French system.I pick those countrys because they are reasonably similar to the UK.

In reply to teflonpete:
That is also partly because we no longer have a big enough industrial base to support that type of system.And tt ain't coming back big time.

In reply to Offwidth:

So apart from the taxes, fruit harvesting, cleaning, construction, high-tech industries, student fees, strong families, fewer crimes, healthcare... what have immigrants ever done for us! :P

How many of you would be happy to live in relative luxury in a secure gated enclosure in apartheid South Africa while millions of poor people scraped a meagre living outside?

Tell me what the difference between this and closed borders is?

In reply to andrewmcleod:

You forgot the Olympic medals, the world-class batsmen, the Champions League-winning footballers ...

In reply to neilh:

Doesn't have to be an 'industrial' base though does it? Admin, Insurance underwriting, catering / hospitality, agriculture, construction, the list of jobs where young Brits are overlooked for immigrant labour for want of some basic training and work experience is endless.

Companies over a certain size should be charged a levy, refundable if they take on a trainee, like engineering companies used to by the EITB.

In reply to teflonpete:

What if I am director of operations at Startup Inc and need a Widget Analyst in my attempt to unseat dominant EnormoCorp. Five years ago my company was me and a mate on the kitchen table. The only Widget Analyst I can find is from Russia. What do I do?



Some of Britain's biggest foreign exchange earners are professional services, universities and pharma. Exactly how do we help young people join those sorts of companies?

I sort of agree with your point, btw, but think that closing the borders whilst we make some (not all by any means) of our kids more employable is just a fantasy, and a damaging one at that.


Maybe if they'd had an opportunity of an apprenticeship or vocational training they might not be drawing benefits.

Surely the problem of worklessness in parts of the UK is such a long-standing social problem that it will take more than the opportunity of a bit o' training to solve it?

See this: http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/what-future-for-britain...

In reply to seankenny:
Then you'll have to employ the Russian guy. Bit different from office admin assistants, chambermaids and carpenters though, isn't it.

Yes some of them are, but there are plenty of jobs not at that level where home grown Brits are being overlooked.


Who said anything about closing borders? I'm merely suggesting that vocational training and work experience might level the playing field.


Yes, in specific parts of the UK that have been workless for generations. There isn't an overnight fix. Is it better just to do nothing at all about those places, like this government, the one before it and the one before that?

In reply to andrewmcleod: who's talking about closed borders? and that's a childish comparison that doesn't work on any level.

In reply to teflonpete:

But usually arguments that we have to "do something" about immigration mean it's harder to employ the Russian guy. Or to marry him.



Overlooked? Or just not good enough?



Actually I think it's huge parts of the UK have employment problems. I don't think any government "does nothing" tho clearly the quality or quantity of that work isn't good enough. But how does one evaluate something like early learning centres such as SureStart - if they have any positive effects it will be a long way down the line...

I know just what you're getting at, but feel that going "stop the immigrants and teach our kids how to answer the phone and use excel" isn't really a viable plan.

In reply to seankenny:


Again, I'm not saying stop the immigrants. Show me where I've said that, just once.

My beef isn't with immigrants, my beef is with middle class liberals who are too happy to rubbish whole generations of people born in this country, and write them off as feckless, when they've been let down by successive governments who used immigrants as a get out of jail free card in place of proper training and employment of school leavers.

In reply to teflonpete:


Apologies for misquoting you. But that's the end of the spectrum you appear to be. Even if you're not!


I'm a typical middle class metropolitan liberal. Sheesh, I even ate kale for tea last night. I don't think people of my ilk rubbish "whole generation" of British people. Maybe just white van men who fly the St George's flag, but it's hardly a generational thing In fact, I suspect a lot of liberals are wondering how to make those British kids left behind more employable.

Immigrants aren't a "get out of jail free card". However useful economically it is to have open-ish borders (and I believe it is), high levels of immigration also cause political headaches. Does Mr Cameron really want to balance the swivel headed loons of his base with the suave big business wallahs who want to employ anyone from anywhere - I doubt it!

Alas for some people in Britain more open borders and more people on the move seems to be a part of modern life. We're just more mobile these days.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

I disagree. We have closed our borders to (almost) everyone except UK, EU and some commonwealth citizens. When I say closed borders I mean not open to economic migrants from poor countries.

And if you think it is 'a childish comparison that doesn't work on any level', perhaps you could elucidate?

In reply to teflonpete:

Doesn't have to be an 'industrial' base though does it? Admin, Insurance underwriting, catering / hospitality, agriculture, construction, the list of jobs where young Brits are overlooked for immigrant labour for want of some basic training and work experience is endless.

'basic training and work experience': -

In the manufacturing sector, jobs traditionally done by school leavers and/or lower educated people of all ages, are now being taken by immigrants (mostly Eastern European) with at least A Level equivalent education.
There is no way that a Company, no matter the size, is going to put Brits on training schemes to compensate for this disparity.

In reply to andrewmcleod: well, I don't really know where to start to be honest.

But you are comparing UK with it's open borders to a gated community of white settlers in a African country oppressing the locals by racial segregation with guns.

Seems like a ridiculous and childish over reaction to a debate about immigration in the UK.

In reply to teflonpete:

I am what not sure where you get this idea that young Brits are overlooked. Companies usually recruit starting from their local area. At equal skill and equal pay, who would you employ someone you don't know from a foreign country with possibly poor English, or someone from your area ?

The fact is that most of the time when a company goes to the trouble to recruit from abroad it's simply because they don't have choice.

In reply to seankenny:

Sorry, I'll just join the ranks of metropolitan liberals and trot out the "everything is rosy because immigrants are wonderful" line then so you can see I'm not a swivel eyed, EDL, pit bull wielding, meat head. ;0)

For the record, I'm the son of a Polish immigrant mother who came over to England as a kid in 1947 and an English father. When I talk about "homegrown Brits", I mean people born and educated here, whatever their parents nationality.


I'm neither a kale munching liberal nor a St George flag flying white van man, I'm somewhere inbetween the two, but I rather suspect that white van man might like his daughter to have the opportunity to get a job when she leaves school.

Personally, I think Blair's idea to get 50% of the population to get degrees and leave the rest on the scrap heap was a big mistake. We're seeing the fruits of that now. There should have been tighter regulation with regard to training and youth employment 15 years ago.


We're more mobile if we've got the education, skills and experience to be needed somewhere. That's why we need immigrants here in some sectors but why a large percentage of our home grown population are marooned.

In reply to MJ:
>
>
>

The problem is that most jobs, even manufacturing, construction, and agriculture, are more and more skilled and specialised nowadays.
The really truly "low skills" jobs are now done in countries where labour is cheaper these days.

One thing is sure, companies can't afford to compensate for the failing of the education system, and if they were forced to, they would probably simply invest somewhere else.

In reply to teflonpete:
>

+1, we should have put strong systems of vocational training for those who can't or don't want to go to university.

In reply to teflonpete:



But who is saying that? Ask anyone who is relaxed about immigration and I suspect they will agree that there are large numbers of young people in the UK that we need to be concerned about.


>I rather suspect that white van man might like his daughter to have the opportunity to get a job when she leaves school.

Well that much is obvious. Who wants their kids to be unemployed? But let's not forget, a lot of British people have very regressive ideas about education.




Perhaps even further back, the process of de-industrialisation could have been better managed?



But part of getting those things is to get a job, and if the jobs aren't there, what do we do? The same problems affect huge swathes of young people in Italy, Greece, etc suffer the same thing. We can fume against immigrants all we like, but that won't solve the problems of companies not investing, of growing automation, of a middle-class with rapidly decreasing spending power.

In reply to teflonpete:
Outside of EU workers that sort of practice is illegal.

In reply to RomTheBear:

That was part of the idea: for a modern knowledge based economy it is necessary to get 50%+ of the population up to degree equivalent qualifications (including the vocational route), so you're just pushing the lazy 'reverse spin'. What Blair missed was properly enabling the vocational route. I'm old enough to remember when City and Guilds meant something, whereas now a lot of BTEC qualifications can leave employers wanting. Most of our competitors (and within the UK, Scotland) have been at 50%+ for years: if England can't catch up soon and stays tight on overseas recruitment to fill the gap, the UK economy is in deep trouble.

In reply to Offwidth:

The idea of getting 50pc of the population up to degree level was always flawed. Firstly it was at least partly a trick to keep people in education until they were 21/22 and therefore off the uneployment figures and never mind the fact they ended up with vast debts. Secondly it led to some rather pointless courses and worthless qualifications (What do you say to a media studies graduate? Can I have fries with that?). Thirdly it led to a devaluation of the academic curency in that a first degree, which was once a fairly prestigious qualifiaction, came to mean almost nothing in many cases and finally it led to employers, for no earthly reason at all, other than a lazy way to whittle down applicants, making all kinds of job 'graduate professions'. At my last company they tried to get all the ad sales team to be graduates. Utterly ridiculous, you needed wheeler dealer barrow boys who could think on their feet, sell ice cream to eskimoes, and cut deals on the hoof not, as we had, a philosopher who could not sell a lifebelt to a drowning man.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

Hear hear!

In reply to Offwidth:

However, I'm old enough to remember when employers took some responsibility for training their staff via the ONC/HNC day release route. Now it's expected that the taxpayer will pick up the tab.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

A few years ago my boss was a board director of a FTSE 100 company. I was given a person spec by HR which stated that the applicant "must" have a degree. It was a junior-middle management role, which required some quite specific experience, that was far more likely to have come from doing a proper job. I popped along to see him to ask what he thought about this (I was new to the firm and I dropped out of university. Erm...twice). His reply lives in my memory:

"Well I ain't got a f**kin' degree - what f**kin relevance is that? Take it the f**k out!!".

In reply to seankenny:

I've just skim-read this thread. What sound sense you are talking. Cheers.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

We don't have open borders at all; they are very closed if you are poor and come from the 'wrong' country. Equally in a gated community the 'right' visitors are welcome while others are not.

So to address this point by point:
Our borders are a gated community: Both allow only the 'right' people through and are inaccessible to others.
We aren't colonising settlers, this is true, but we do discriminate based on your citizenship which is nearly the same as the country of your birth - a factor you cannot control (like skin colour).
We may not be 'oppressing' people in your eyes in the same way; BUT I bet the vast majority of white South Africans weren't actively engaged in oppression, they were just part of a system in which they benefited at the expense of others. Equally we condemn people in other parts of the world to low-paid exploitative labour, because they are too poor to refuse.
We are not an African country, but all countries are part of the world, and all people should have the right to the same opportunities?
We don't segregate by skin colour, but we do segregate by passport (mostly an accident of your birth).
Our position in the world is at least partly propped up by guns; we do have a substantial military, and our other rich ally with an even larger military, which prevents the poor countries of the world having some sort of revolution and otherthrowing the powerful.


I prefer to think of it as the bigger picture. My conclusion is simple: we don't allow free immigration from all countries because we are selfish and don't want it to harm our standard of living.

I realise I am complicit; I am just not lying to myself about that (as much as I try and foist responsibility onto our government).

In reply to andrewmcleod:
Or to ask another question:-
Does your house have a door? With a lock?
Or is there a big sign saying 'Come in and make yourself at home'
Do you think 'Well I've got all this stuff but some people are worse off and may want some of it so it's OK if they help thmselves to the food in the fridge, the money on the mantelpiece and the telly'?
Thought not.
Yes, I do appreciate this is a fatuous analogy but no more fatuous than yours

In reply to seankenny:

Immigration is far too complex an issue for views to be on a 'spectrum'. There might be a 'how much you dislike foreigners spectrum' but it's clear teflon p is not on the unpleasant side of that one.

Immigration has advantages and disadvantages for both the host and donor country, add to that the 'chain' type nature of worker migration globally, and it's clear that any attempt to distill its impact to 'good' or 'bad' will fail.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Thanks Gordon, much appreciated.

In reply to Papillon:

Agreed. My comments about TP were as much about how he initially came across, rather than his points. I'm also uneasy about conflating the arguments for/against immigration and those for changing the education system for some of our children and young people.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

The problem here is that you haven't actually read Offwidth's post properly, he talks about degrees, but he also talks about high level technical qualifications, it is the technical qualification side where successive governments have failed.

In reply to The New NickB:

Thanks (sometimes I wonder if I didn't dream I wrote stuff here)

50% doesnt matter if we import the expertise to fill the gap (ie returning to this thread). It's if we fail in both areas that we are really in the proverbial. I'd rather we started the long job of rebuilding proper vocational qualifications but in the mean-time skilled immigration is the only way to fill the gap and government tinkering on this is really dangerous. Of course the US who have even bigger problems with their education system have been importing skilled workers for decades. In the computing, electonics and communications MSc courses run in my school only a handful of students are UK nationals, yet all the good students can pick and choose a UK job (subject to visa). When they closed my old Electrical and Electronic Engineering department in the last batch of EEE undergrads all the UK students had about 10 offers each: the problem was there were not enough of them to make the course viable. Our Mechanical undergrad course when it closed had a Rolls Royce part-time entry where 10 mature students a year went throgh averaging marks in the first class band. Another thing we did was we fail students who were not up to standards (something the EDEXEL HND machine seems very reluctant to do on what I see as much too low standards: we dropped all our HNDs on standards grounds when they took over BTEC).

In reply to Offwidth:

Interesting post. Why do you think there are so few UK students on your courses?

In reply to seankenny:

At undergarduate level its really about UK anti-STEM culture and lack of government incentive. At MSc level you almost have to be mad: good job or even more debt?? Oddly UK PhD's are holding up (if only at about a third or a quarter of the level we need to replace all the people like me when I retire).

My University almost closed maths, physics and chemistry (and thought about computing) but backtracked and saved those and a rump of the engineering team (including me). All the courses are healthyish again now but more because other universities did close departments than any increase in demand. I respect the idea of free choice in what you study for your degree but some incentive for courses in areas where we are importing thousands of overseas graduates to keep industry growing must be sensible. Several hundred overseas MSc students every year are part of the economics of my school's continued survival. You'd think they couldn't mess with MSc entry but a few years back 1 in 4 chinese students were arbritrarily stopped at UK immigration despite following process to that point. I dealt with an outside case where we won: the idiot working for our embassy in Malaysia couldn't get why a qualified herbalist would wish to study a MSc in computing and he was suspected of wanting to enter the UK to do a runner and work... there must have been easier ways to acheive this 'illegal aim' than studying BSc computing UK franchise for 3 years in KL. Of course in reality he wanted to become an entrepreneur running a herbalist web buisness. It took 2 appeals, including my input and the pressure of a well connected college owner, to get the visa.

In reply to The New NickB:

I had read it but I was addressing the very narrow point of setting an arbitrary target of 50pc going to uni, the political cynicism that at least partly underpinned it and the unintended consquences it has created both for the individuals concerned and the counry as a whole.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:
Just for fun I Googled daft degree courses and the daftest I found was Forensic investigation, tourism and travel reported in Runners World while those of a more scientific bent may enjoy the Prof's rant in this piece from the FT Magazine
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e2772e34-45a0-11de-b6c8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2jx...

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

My house does indeed have a door, which remains locked. If you were to ignore that people who were not less well off might just nick all my stuff instead of taking only what they need, then it would remain the case that there was an element of selfishness - that I wanted things to stay mine, and not share them or give them to people more in need. I am just not lying to myself about this.

I guess I feel your analogy is less fatuous than you think it is. It is slightly different though, as there are millions of people around the world who would be extremely glad to come to the UK, work hard for what we would consider an extremely low standard of living, and not take any benefits from the state but still pay tax. But we don't let them because they would take 'our' jobs ('ours' by divine right, I guess?).

In reply to Wiley Coyote: Sorry, nothing can beat this one at Bishop Auckland College

http://www.bacoll.ac.uk/latest-news/item/1045-college-looking-for-students-...

In reply to Offwidth: Completely agree when I did my computing degree in the UK 80% of the students were foreigners. Not only that but none of the British students got a first class on their BSc, and it wasn't even a difficult course at all, pretty much really basic stuff up to fourth year. The masters was more challenging, but then there was no british student there at all, slightly worrying, when you know that it's recruiting crazy at the moment in computing. Good grads are often starting at 30K and are often at 50k in five years these days.

In reply to andrewmcleod: Can you give an example of someone we won't let in, what job they are after that we need to protect for "our own" , so we can try to understand what on earth you are going on about. Thx

In reply to RomTheBear:


Why do you think that is? Is it that British students can't be bothered, is it that British students aren't educated to a high enough standard in secondary education to provide a firm base for doing technical subjects and that sciences have been less encouraged in the secondary school system, or is it that funding arrangements are different for British students?

In reply to RomTheBear:

Interestingly some of my 3rd year modules at university were also part of a taught masters degree. They were the easiest modules I did and all the undergrads got far higher marks than the masters students who were without exception internationals.

In reply to seankenny:

You played the man, not the ball. No worries, I've done it enough times.

I still maintain that our need for immigrants to fill posts to keep our economy on the move is due largely to a failure in integration between education and industry.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Well the new 'Britain on the Fiddle' programme aired programme last night, seems to be out to counter the good news reports:-

'Britain on the Fiddle', which starts at 9pm on BBC One tomorrow, will feature Caroline Banana, aged 40, who was handed a 12-month community order with 215 hours of unpaid work earlier this year.

Zimbabwe-born Mrs Banana, who is related to Canaan Banana, the first president of the country following independence in 1980, admitted failing to declare £95,000 won on Deal or No Deal and continuing to claim housing benefits.

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Deal-Deal-benefit-cheat-Caroline-Banana-feat...

In reply to teflonpete:

Structural integration failures of that sort take many years to fix, yet if the culture doesn't match the fix it simply won't work anyway. That's why my old department and about a hundred others closed across the UK. They WERE integrated, they produced OND, ONC, HNC, HND, BSc, BEng, MSc, MEng and PhD graduates that the economy needed but not enough students wanted to study them. Within the pool of those with STEM qualifications other subjects (like Psychology, Forensics, Sports Science) were full to overflowing with seriously problematic prospects for related employment.

On the other hand, following a whipped up frenzy about immigrants it's possible to stop those we need in to fill the skilled employment gap with an immigration change in months.

Britian needs culture change to increase respect for STEM it needs a return to a fully integrated educated system when the culture is fixed and while we wait it needs skilled immigrants.

In reply to Offwidth:

Do we have an anti-STEM culture? If so, how does this manifest itself? I'm not disagreeing, just curious.

As for the MSc level applicants, doesn't the MSc holder enjoy higher lifetime earnings, therefore making it worthwhile? If this is the case one would expect numerate students to be receptive to the argument...


You'd think they couldn't mess with MSc entry but a few years back 1 in 4 chinese students were arbritrarily stopped at UK immigration despite following process to that point... It took 2 appeals, including my input and the pressure of a well connected college owner, to get the visa.

This is incredibly dangerous to the long-term health of the UK economy.

In reply to Jim C:

Same old shit. Most of the crimnals in the UK are good old brits and what defines crime in the UK relates strongly to wealth and power. Our prime minister's dad isn't a crimnal as he has the money and contacts that enable him to hide his money legally away from tax.

In reply to teflonpete:
till maintain that our need for immigrants to fill posts to keep our economy on the move is due largely to a failure in integration between education and industry.

I imagine (I don't know, I'm not a technical expert) that in an era of very specialised work, that however good your education system, you are going to be employing people from outside your national boundaries to do jobs that need doing.

Also, how much *should* education be dovetailed to the needs of industry? After all, there is a difference between education and training. And, going slightly against the grain of this thread, arts graduates can be good earners for UK plc - think advertising, design, film, TV, architecture etc. Being highly skilled in these disciplines isn't just about being trained, it's about being highly educated.

In reply to Offwidth:

Full agreement with all of that from me.

It would seem that Prof John Perkins concludes the same re attitude towards STEM.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10424148/Immigrants-fill...

In reply to seankenny:
>

For sure, there are going to be some jobs at the cutting edge that require skills and knowledge from a worldwide pool of potential candidates. My point yesterday was more that we don't seem to be investing or coordinating education, training and employment for sub degree / professional level jobs, of which there are thousands per top level, cutting edge job.


Obviously there's a place for many different disciplines, both within education, and training, but see Offwidth's post and the Telegraph article I linked to above to see how science and engineering subjects aren't being taken up.

In reply to seankenny:

Anti STEM is relative to our competitor nations and I'd say only the US is ahead of us in that (and the US is happy to import expertise). The key problem to me is that british upper middle classes stil see STEM as second class in our culture and they drive the system. The vast majority of students in British univeristies are middle class kids and too few choose STEM compared to what the economy needs. Its not just STEM its difficult or unfashionable subjects in general that have stuggled at times: modern languages, philosophy, economics, geography....

In the old days more STEM MSc courses were funded and I suspect that is part of our problem . Student debt really is hitting home you may be able to defer fee payment but you can't defer the other debt (and the job offers at BSc are tempting).

It's pretty easy for a bright UK/EU student to get a funded PhD in STEM, this is healthy but as I said the numbers are again too low for the need of the ecomomy (more immigrants fill the gap). I have seen a few grants lost because we couldn't find someone to fill a funded PhD post that required UK/EU.

On the dovetail it's to society (not just industry) and we already do stuff like this: we ration places in medicine we pay bursaries for students studying teacher training in some areas. STEM gets more core government money than some subjects to (part) fund the lab equipment needs. We don't need to stop people studying arts or media studies or even homeopathy. We just need to extend the incentives and rationing of funding a little bit more than we do now. We also need to stop Universities closing STEM departments unless the reasons are exceedingly clear and core fund STEM the full amount to buy the lab kit needed. Universities, like much of the UK, are suffering from too much free market economy.

In reply to teflonpete:

1 in 5 jobs filled from outside the UK because there aren't the people with the skills, or 1 in 5 jobs filled from outside the UK because there aren't the people with the skills prepared to work for the salary offered?

From a jobs mailing list I'm on in the past week or so

Job 1 - Essential criteria
A scientific/engineering degree, Competence with excel formulae and macros, Programming skills, Web / database development. Salary - 18k

Job 2 - Essential criteria
MSc Graduate (scientific discipline), Experience of web-hosted computing, Cloud Applications, Open Source Software. Salary - 20k (London)

In reply to ebygomm:

And there lies another problem associated with the amount of debt UK degree students amass during their time at university. I don't know how much a science or engineering degree costs in Poland or Spain, but I doubt it's as expensive in absolute terms as it is in the UK.

In reply to ebygomm:

More free market economics... the jobs still need doing though. The UK has got itself in this mess through too much belief in the market. The market (lack of student numbers) closed my old EEE department, then my Engineering Department, then my Engineering, Computing and Technology department. Then my Computing and Technology School and I'm now in a Science and Technology School that always has at least one area under the spotlight for KPI's. I'm currently optimistic as Scientists and Engineers are real good at finding solutions if you let them and our Senior Management does let us do that for the moment (where previously they didnt)

If we want to behave like the US, immigration is part of the package. If we want to be more European, the state investment, market influence, slightly higher but fairer taxes (that function more efficently than the US) and with lower differential salaries, I'm all for that.

In reply to teflonpete:

To be honest I don't really know, this is just my experience a fairly anectodal. One thing that I noticed for sure is that Math skills of British students out of high school is basically total crap compared to Germany and France.

In reply to Offwidth:

I presume the reason so many kids opt out of STEM as soon as possible is that (in my experience anyway) they are tough and demanding subjects. I write as someone who at school in the Sixties, ditched sciences asap and did Eng, French and German A levels, which I found much easier and allowed for a fair bit of waffle but were still considered valid academic subjects. Ironically, these days I'm fascinated by physics but back then schooling was definitely not allowed to get in the way of my education. If my lazy teenaged self was at school today I'm sure he'd be looking for the softest touches now on offer, probably waltz off to uni to t*ss it off for three years' partying and suddenly find himself with a degree that employers laughed at and a £30k debt. Kids will not change so the school system has to and that probably means cutting out the soft options. As a parent I know how hard it is to get teenagers to make serious decisions for six/seven year in advance and buckle down to hard work. Or perhaps STEM subjects could be cheaper at uni, Maybe £3k a year for maths and £15k for aromatherapy to reflect the value to the economy?

In reply to RomTheBear:

That's not strictly true. Where we fall behind is the performance of the average to weaker students. The best students in the UK are as good as anywhere. You can blame things like maths coursework the dumbing down of the syllabus in GCSE's and ignoring the increasing educational underclass for a lot of that. At least the first part of that's changing now.

In reply to Wiley Coyote: Nothing wrong with English, French and German A levels... we need more like that now. University Modern Languages departments are under pressure as I said above. You can't force Universities to charge more, what you can do is fund support for key shortage areas, cut fees, increase grants and scholarships.

Your other point is also important UK kids have had an easy life for a long time compared to competitor nations. I've a friend in Switzerland and his hard working, bright kids couldn't cope and had to come back to the UK. I don't advise we should ape the Swiss but there must be a middle way.

In reply to Offwidth:

Of course the best students will be as good as anywhere, but apparently only 20% of the population studies Maths after 16 in the UK ! That's sounds a bit crazy to me, how can one expect to get a job in engineering or any barely technical job without an even a basic understanding of calculus, probabilities, and stats ?

In reply to RomTheBear:

It's hard to do maths A level if you lazily blagged your way through the GCSE. Even with the brightest kids at A-level in some of the best schools I've seen 'system problems' get in the way. As a great example I was tutoring a math mechanics A level paper a couple of years back for someone I sometimes climb with and besides the papers being way easier than they were 30 years back (lucky as it was the first time I'd done mechanics for 18 years), the student had been told to memorise stuff someone of her ability should have been told to understand. I took the risk and unlearned some bad habits taught some better ones and she responded and got the grade she needed and now has the ability to think through problems better (and hopefully will transfer that to other stuff... understanding beats memorising in most areas). The more usual cases are dumb things students do in our first year that illustrate issues that are way below A level maths: multiplying 10 to the power of three by 10 to the minus three on a calculator always generates some fun. Still, while we fix this, to fill the skill gap we need immigrants.

In reply to ebygomm:

That's the usual line taken with fruit picking etc. "Lazy brits won't do it", as opposed to not prepared to work for the salary offered.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

There's a fair bit of pressure exerted by schools as well. They'd much rather someone got an A* in clipboard administration than a C in Maths. A friend had a hell of a job getting his daughter onto GCSE courses of any real value.

In reply to Ridge:

Something the evil bastard Gove (boo,hiss) is trying to change.......

In reply to Offwidth:

I'm not so sure that the Brits are the majority of the brightest criminals or scammers,operating in the UK, nor do I think that the Brits are necessarily the majority of the brightest doctors or physicists etc. I think we will attract the brightest and best of criminal and legitimate immigrants.

That said , it is hard to tell, as a lot of criminality is postal, online or telephone scams, so difficult to know who is really behind them.

I guess we will have to watch a few more episodes , and see if there is a pattern over several weeks, one way or another.

In reply to Postmanpat:

With the jumbled confusion of 'free schools'? Teachers in free schools don't need to be qualified as teachers.

Aanyway, wrong topic for this thread.

In reply to Timmd:
You mean like in those independent schools that we are supposed to hate because they give kids an unfair advantage?

In reply to Tall Clare :http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kvftxdy0k54&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dkvf...

In reply to Postmanpat:

Sure but those public school teachers are in a much more supportive environment (where some key training areas are handled by someone else) and with highly motivated kids. Academies are much more pressured than public schools almost by definition (if they are not they are an enclave and probably not meeting their social diversity needs).

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

You don't think that if we started offering work visas to anyone from anywhere in the world, vast swarms of people from all over the world would turn up tomorrow (having spent their life savings on the plane ticket, or having travelled overland) to do anything that was available? Even if we cut the minimum wage by a factor of 5 or so for foreign immigrants.

Remember these people come from countries where there is no benefits system, no safety net to fall back onto, and if you run out of money going hungry (or even starving to death in the worst countries) is a distinct possibility.

There are millions of people in the third world for whom sharing a house designed for 5 people with 25 people, and working for £10 a day even in the UK which is of course expensive, and doing the crappest menial jobs available would be a step up in living standards.

Currently if you are from outside the EU it is extremely difficult to get a work visa in the UK, and you already need a job.

In reply to andrewmcleod:

Quite interesting piece on the UK and the rest of the world here:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21589420-country-faces-choice-between...

In reply to Tall Clare:

Like this: "Overpaid leftie academic who's never lived in the real world makes mad announcement from his ivory tower".

In reply to Tony Naylor:


Who was using carefully selected data, much of it temporary in effect even when it is actually true, with a great many assumptions, errors and deliberate misleading information. Carefully loaded to maximise short-term benefits while disregarding or minimising long term costs, or non-costed or non-monetary costs. Also ignoring the ONS data that suggests in the next 25 years the UK population, having been largely static from 1970 to 1990, will increase in the next 25 years by a city the size of London, while there is not a snowball's chance in hell of providing the infrastructure or jobs for all these people, quite apart from the fact that we already have millions unemployed

In reply to Simon4:

Thanks goodness the world is blessed with mega-brains such as yours to help us deal with this morass of piffle.

Carefully loaded to maximise short-term benefits while disregarding or minimising long term costs, or non-costed or non-monetary costs. Also ignoring the ONS data that suggests in the next 25 years the UK population, having been largely static from 1970 to 1990

I just looked this up - wasn't there a very slight drop in the UK population in the late 1970s due to the dire economy?

Be careful what you wish for comes to mind.

In reply to Tall Clare:
Nationalism, as explained by Doug Stanhope:

youtube.com/watch?v=FKT4a-RMT5o&