Perception vs Reality

Sampong

Yorkie1 wrote: »

So, whilst I accept that there may be some occasions where immigrants have successfully outcompeted locals, let's not get run away with the thought that locals are always outcompeted - when in fact, they haven't even bothered to turn up to compete.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24108665

Another migrant, a man in his 20s from Lithuania, told the BBC he was being paid below the minimum wage.

He showed us pay slips recording that he worked one hour at a rate of £84.47.

But he claims that was for three days' work, meaning he was earning just £2.30 an hour.

His landlord - Mr Mezals - also deducted his rent and travel to the fields, leaving him with £20 for the week. One week, when rent arrears were deducted from his pay packet, he was left with just 43p to survive on.

When confronted by a reporter, Mr Mezals said: "I don't exploit anything" and "maybe police have evidence but not you."

Yes let's not get run away with the fact that locals are always out competed. They should get off their lazy backsides and learn to survive on £0.43p per week and allow themselves to be exploited. How dare they have the audacity to try to artificially increase labour rates.

Hamish thinks you're spot on though, so we're all good.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Sampong wrote: »

Yes let's not get run away with the fact that locals are always out competed..

Drivel.

As always, you take the tiny, vanishingly small, minority of abuses and try to portray it as the norm.

Which would be like saying all white males are like Nick Griffin.

Or all UKIP members are like Farage's ex-National Front election agent.

Nigel's former election agent is to stand for UKIP in the local elections. Pity he's ex-National Front and therefore banned from even being a member of UKIP.

But Nigel can always be counted on to ignore the rules when it suits him!

After all, does he not happily sit with far-right MEPs in the EFD Group? Including, those who defend mass murderers? LINK

Martyn Heale was a former National Front branch organiser in Hammersmith in the late 1970s and a NF candidate in the London borough of Hammersmith in the 1979 local elections. Heale later resigned from the National Front and became Chairman of the West London branch of the far-right New Britain Party.

Mr Heale is now chairman of UKIP South Thanet

http://juniusonukip.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/ukip-hypocrisy-of-nigel-farages-stance.html

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It is.



Seriously?

After all this time on these boards, and the reams of statistical evidence and research papers that prove the exact opposite of what you claim, you still believe the fallacy that 'immigrants steal our jobs'?

Unbelievable....

No less unbelievable than the fantasy of believing that for every immigrant that comes here seeking work, at least one new job is created. And by job, I don't mean self employment, but rather a real job in the PAYE world paying at least the FT NMW. Not to say that the self employed aren't doing real work, but, if HMRC are to believed, millions of the self employed don't even make the FT NMW in profits.

dktreesea

Sampong wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24108665



Yes let's not get run away with the fact that locals are always out competed. They should get off their lazy backsides and learn to survive on £0.43p per week and allow themselves to be exploited. How dare they have the audacity to try to artificially increase labour rates.

Hamish thinks you're spot on though, so we're all good.

There seems to be a fair bit of this kind of subcontracting the work out going on even outside the agricultural sector. You can have a situation where a restaurant employs worker A, at the NMW, all above board. So this worker collects his pay, gets his NI etc, but gives his job to worker B, an illegal migrant, for a fee. The migrant does the work for £3 an hour.

So the immigration people came and raided the place (this was a restaurant in our neck of the woods). Worker B was represented as being worker A, right down to "his" British birth certificate.

And the restaurant owner? Sometimes they are in on it. i.e. worker A gives them a kick back, and in that way the owner doesn't have to pay the NMW to worker A except on paper.

It's a way of work that is quite alien, imho, to our culture. We tend to think of someone's job as "their" job. The idea that at various times, all year if you want, or say, when you go on holiday, you can subcontract your job out, for a fee, to someone desparate enough to work for a considerable discount, just seems so "un-British" to me.

Sampong

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Drivel.

As always, you take the tiny, vanishingly small, minority of abuses and try to portray it as the norm.

Which would be like saying all white males are like Nick Griffin.

Or all UKIP members are like Farage's ex-National Front election agent.


http://juniusonukip.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/ukip-hypocrisy-of-nigel-farages-stance.html

It's certainly not drivel, and the UKIP election officer has absolutely nothing to do with the exploitation of migrant workers. As usual you are trying to muddy the waters whilst failing to face up to the real facts.

Anyway we need not worry, I am sure as you say it's just a "vanishingly small" number of abuses - nothing to be overly concerned about.

Just the odd three cases of human trafficking here;
http://www.elystandard.co.uk/news/human_trafficking_problems_being_tackled_in_wisbech_1_2178145

an the odd six cases of human trafficking there;
http://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/news/human_trafficking_is_put_under_the_spotlight_in_the_fens_1_2873173

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Sampong wrote: »

I am sure as you say it's just a "vanishingly small" number of abuses - nothing to be overly concerned about.

Just the odd three cases of human trafficking here;

an the odd six cases of human trafficking there;

And the articles you link to completely support my point.

Out of a year long multi-agency 'operation' targeting the tiny section of society vulnerable to such abuses, interviewing and surveying many hundreds of people, they found just a handful of cases.

This is the problem with you kippers, you take what is a vanishingly small problem, and blow it out of all proportion.

In a society of 63 million people, you would absolutely expect to see a few thousand cases of people abusing the system in that way every year, that's just human nature.

And in fact, there were 1180 victims of human trafficking identified in 2012, which is shameful, and it is right that the Police and other agencies continue to aggressively crack down on such abuses.

But it is a vanishingly small number when put into perspective as a percentage of the 63 million people here in the UK, which is what you have to do if you think it's having any measurable effect on wages on average.... and it remains a vanishingly small number as a percentage of the many millions of immigrants here in the UK, which objectively you have to look at if you think it's endemic in the immigrant community.

And it would still be a vanishingly small percentage if it were ten times or even fifty times higher.

We see cases of the native-born Brits abusing the welfare system, committing crime, and evading taxes at vastly higher rates.... Both in absolute number terms and also as a percentage of people.

But I don't see you jumping up and down about that, which is a much bigger issue.

Your perception of the problem, is vastly different to the reality of the problem..... Which is what this thread is all about.

dktreesea

Hamish, you seem to be one of these guys who has an opinion and then selectively picks out olny those facts that suppoert that opinion, igmoring all evidence that flies in the face of it.

If the immigrants were bringing sufficient resources to the UK that had been earned elsewhere, AND were investing those resources into profitable enterprises that produced goods or services that could be exported, then yes, they may well add to the economy.

That's what tends to happen in places like Australia, where they import, for example, mining engineers that they haven't had to invest in the education or upbringing of, and who produce items that can be exported from the day they arrive and start work.

But what happens here? We import labourers that work in our fields, for farmers who don't export, whose crops, rather than increasing the overall worth of our economy via exporting, instead push down the value of similar crops, bringing down the incomes of all of our farmers.

We import workers who fill our care homes and hospitals, helping to ensure that our own home grown trained doctors and nurses can't even secure jobs here. 88,000 foreign born doctors work in the NHS, half of whom, according to a recent article in the Telegraph, wouldn't be able to practise here if they were subjected to the same scrutiny and standards our home grown doctors face. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10773857/Half-of-foreign-doctors-are-below-British-standards.html
Why should we be importing any doctors and nurses at all whilever British born and trained health professionals can't find jobs?

And then there are the "self employed". Okay, they don't take jobs directly since they make there own, but they also enable companies that would otherwise have had to employ someone at the NMW to instead buy in the self employed labourers instead. People who can afford to work for £1 an hour - all above board, i.e. they tender to the local council for the work, and come in way cheaper than any of our home grown companies can afford to come in at - because the social welfare system heavily subsidises their incomes via housing benefit and working/child tax credits.

There are four local takeaways near to us. They used to pay people to do deliveries. Then along came an enterprising Polish guy. He offered to deliver their home deliveries at a rate that was at a significantly better rate than they were paying. He's got a couple of guys working for him, both self employed, so free to charge however little they want to. That may well be a far more efficient use of resources, and certainly the businesses are happy with the new arrangement. But what about the 4 people they replaced, all now unemployed?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

Hamish, you seem to be one of these guys who has an opinion and then selectively picks out olny those facts that suppoert that opinion, igmoring all evidence that flies in the face of it.

And you seem to be one of those people that completely ignores the actual evidence and data, and instead relies on myths, anecdotes, and fallacies to 'support' your case.

You actually believe in 'The Lump Of Labour Fallacy'.:rotfl:

I can't really have a sensible discussion with you as long as that remains the case.....

But what happens here? We import labourers that work in our fields, for farmers who don't export, whose crops, rather than increasing the overall worth of our economy via exporting, instead push down the value of similar crops, bringing down the incomes of all of our farmers.

Please, do yourself a favour, go and read a good economics textbook before making any more absurd assertions like the above.

Just.... wow.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And you seem to be one of those people that completely ignores the actual evidence and data, and instead relies on myths, anecdotes, and fallacies to 'support' your case.

You actually believe in 'The Lump Of Labour Fallacy'.:rotfl:

I can't really have a sensible discussion with you as long as that remains the case.....



Please, do yourself a favour, go and read a good economics textbook before making any more absurd assertions like the above.

Just.... wow.

lets just say a young doctor arrives in the country with his non working wife and three school aged children

do tell me how many new jobs are created?
a reference to an economics text book that explains the inevitability of the result

what would the figure be if the doctor's wife gained employment?

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I don't think it's a good idea to drive down carers wages.

But that's because you're pathologically incapable of thinking more than one step ahead. Do you think higher taxation is good? Do you think the elderly having to spend even more on care is good? Do you think the quality of care falling is good?

Many people are already paying £100 a day (£36,500 a year) for residential dementia care and you think that isn't enough

Paying more for care to get better care is one thing. Paying more for the same, or worse care, because a bunch of racists living in a town with pretty much no immigrants want to go back to the days of blacking up and the empire is epically stupid.