Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

Filo25

kabayiri wrote: »

There is no practical reason why machines can not pick all these crops. It's capital investment up front which might be the issue.

We had combinations of machines making a shirt from scratch decades ago. The robot sewing machine could stitch a 2 part collar faster than any human could. That's a more complex task than picking fruit & veg.

Machines still aren't as good at picking as humans although they are still working on the issue so hopefully can continue to be improved on.

Herzlos

Picking fruit, particularly strawberries, is really hard to do for a machine. You've got to assess which ones are ready, pluck them and store them without damage. So you'd need a robot with good visuals and a full range of movement across all axes and rotation, with very sensitive pressure control. It's possible, but very expensive to do en mass.


It's not like carrots where you can point a harvester at a row, pull everything up and then filter out the soil.

mayonnaise wrote: »

A strawberry picker would usually get minimum wage which is around £7.50 ph.
How much do you think that should increase to attract local 'workers' ?

What if all of the 'workers' are currently busy with other, higher paid jobs, since unemployment is so low?
Should we import workers from Up North?

ukcarper

ilovehouses wrote: »

Well if I was PM and there was someone in the cabinet for who the adjective 'extreme' applied I'd like to think (a) I wouldn't have given them a job in the first place or (b) sack them.

Governments are meant to govern. If they can't they should call a general election.

Not a easy as that many people do not trust remain favouring MPs to deliver brexit so balance is needed and when Labours main concern to overthrow the government she can expect no help from them.

ukcarper

Filo25 wrote: »

Machines still aren't as good at picking as humans although they are still working on the issue so hopefully can continue to be improved on.

True but there is no real incentive to develop machines when you have an source of cheap Labour.

Enterprise_1701C

Pre eu fruit picking was done by teens after extra money, often in the school holidays or weekends. These jobs are no longer available to teens because of the eu.

I watch shows like Border Control, and, according to them (reality shows) Canada happily turns people away at the border to stop them taking jobs from locals, can't help but look forward to the days when our border officers are allowed to do the same.

Filo25

ukcarper wrote: »

True but there is no real incentive to develop machines when you have an source of cheap Labour.

On the contrary, it is being worked on but at the stage of "optimism" at present, rather than being a viable solution.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/robots-can-t-pick-strawberries-as-well-as-humans-yet/

spikyone

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

Pre eu fruit picking was done by teens after extra money, often in the school holidays or weekends. These jobs are no longer available to teens because of the eu.

Whilst I was (and still am) a Leave supporter, I'm not naive enough to believe that in 2018 there's a queue of teenagers desperate to earn money by picking fruit. And it doesn't solve the problem of fruit picking outside school holidays.

However I agree with the sentiment that importing labour for a job that 99% of the population could perform is a ridiculous situation. We are not short of potential labour to pick fruit, but Tony Blair's "send them all to university" idiocy has created a nation where practically everyone thinks that manual work is beneath them. What we need is a more joined-up approach to those that are claiming benefits, where going out and picking fruit - or filling other low-skill employment gaps left by reduced unskilled immigration - is advantageous compared to the free money of being on the dole. That doesn't necessarily mean cutting unemployment benefits, but might mean the government subsidises fruit-picking to slightly top up a minimum wage provided by growers. That supports the industry and has to be cheaper than just paying people to "look for work". Win-win.

kabayiri

ukcarper wrote: »

True but there is no real incentive to develop machines when you have an source of cheap Labour.

We had the exact same debate when it came to spend on manufacturing tech here in the UK or shift production to China.

We all saw the result chosen.

It's tricky because undoubtedly China has pushed down the prices of things we all use like laptops, but we lost good engineering skills....now we complain of a shortage.

I still don't buy into this idea that migrants will happily work in dirty fields, acquiring a bad back, until they are ready to retire. It's a sticking plaster of a solution.

iro

mayonnaise wrote: »

Yep. Just you.

Well I have one like, so not just me then mayo.

Was this how you perceived Brexit, you met one leave voter and thought it is just you and then woke up and found there were actually 17.4 million?

vivatifosi

I was watching Adam Boulton on Sky News earlier and there was plenty of Brexit on that, in particular Faisal Islam and the story about components from UK manufacturers. It wasn't all about that though, there was also a really good segment on the total c*ck up currently being made by the train companies.