Perception vs Reality

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

How does having a few hundred thousand unemployed native Brits in the North of England solve my problem?

The fact is that the native born population cannot be bothered to move to where the work is.

Immigrants, by definition, can.

For whatever reason, many Brits feel entitled to sit at home watching TV and claiming benefits while immigrants just get on with it and get a job.

Solve that problem first, and the population problem, and the medical advances for aged people problem, and the deficit projection under low migration scenario problem, and then come and say we don't need immigration....

Until then, you're making the equivalent argument to cutting off our own legs now in the hope that one day bionic legs might be invented and might be better and might be affordable....

we have had about 10 million immigrants in the last 10 years: if none have chosen to come to your part of the world then why would importing another 10 million help you?

better to solve your actual problem with the benefits culture rather than solve a problem we don't actually have.

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

'Round my way' in the north east of Scotland there are three job vacancies for every job seeker and unemployment of circa 2%.

I suppose it must be that all the "many unskilled and semi skilled workers who are unemployed" just can't read a train timetable or figure out how to catch a megabus...

Or more plausibly, they can't be bothered getting off their ar5es and moving to where the jobs are....

Perhaps our benefits system needs reformed? So that all these people supposedly looking for work actually do a bit of... well... you know, looking?

So if there are so many vacancies, what's the excuse for employers not to take up the 2% still unemployed in your area?

I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't want to move to where the work is. Would you want to live in the south east of England and commute goodness knows how many hours a day to and from work?

Plus what kind of work are you talking about? Fishing? Working on an oil rig? I would guess that a fair few unemployed people would be physically incapable of doing those kinds of work.

And yes, our benefits system could do with a bit of reform. For instance, requiring people to pay into the systen before they are allowed to draw anything out. Oh! That's the system in most of Europe! A bit of common sense prevailing.

It's a pity Cameron and Co, while they are bemoaning the future "United Federation of Europe", don't have a look at what works well in the other "states" and adopt some of those practices here.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

So if there are so many vacancies, what's the excuse for employers not to take up the 2% still unemployed in your area?

Full employment is neither desirable nor achievable in the real world.

In practical terms, those unemployed up here are essentially unemployable. Often second or third generation unemployed with absolutely no desire to work or intention of ever working.

That's a legacy of our overly generous benefits system.

Not immigration.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

Would you want to live in the south east of England and commute goodness knows how many hours a day to and from work?

If the choice was doing that or being unemployed, I'd choose England.

I've never claimed a day of unemployment or any other kind of benefits in my entire life.

Plus what kind of work are you talking about? Fishing? Working on an oil rig? I would guess that a fair few unemployed people would be physically incapable of doing those kinds of work.

Working in shops, bars, offices, warehouses, manufacturers, hotels, local government, etc etc etc.

Oil rigs and fishing boats is only about 5% of the local employment headcount. Although a fair few more work in associated industries.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Full employment is neither desirable nor achievable in the real world.

In practical terms, those unemployed up here are essentially unemployable. Often second or third generation unemployed with absolutely no desire to work or intention of ever working.

That's a legacy of our overly generous benefits system.

Not immigration.

so the solution is to reform the Scottish benefits system and not import 5 million immigrants in the SE (of England)

or of course, if normal intelligent people find they can't recruit the right people, they raise the price sufficiently to attract the right people.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

if normal intelligent people find they can't recruit the right people, they raise the price sufficiently to attract the right people.

So you want to create an artificial scarcity of labour, pushing up prices of goods and services.

How do pensioners and others on fixed incomes pay for this?

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

So you want to create an artificial scarcity of labour, pushing up prices of goods and services.

How do pensioners and others on fixed incomes pay for this?

whats artificial about the laws of supply and demand?

are they different in socialist scotland?

short of specific skills: pay more to attract the right people; it's worked for thousands of years

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

short of specific skills: pay more to attract the right people; it's worked for thousands of years

Can pensioners on fixed incomes afford to pay more for their goods and services when prices have to rise because of a skills/labour shortage?

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Can pensioners on fixed incomes afford to pay more for their goods and services when prices have to rise because of a skills/labour shortage?

we don't have skills/labour shortages

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

we don't have skills/labour shortages

Clearly we do in some areas today, even with immigration.

We would on a much wider basis without immigration.

And this would only get worse as the population ages and the population of working age people declined.