British jobs for British workers.

[InsaneApache]

As no one has started a post on the direct action at the oil refineries and power plants, I will.

It seems that our Great Leaders' populist chant of British jobs for British workers has come around to bite him on the bum.

Rawnsley nails him in the Observer today...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...s-gordon-brown

Brown was deliberately being disingenuous when he ripped off the slogan from the BNP. He knows that our membership of the EU doesn't allow the UK government, or any other EU government come to that, to stop workers from the EU working anywhere they want within Europe. Unfortunatley a lot of people either don't know that or took Brown at his word. So now we have a situation that is spreading spontaneously across Britain, where folks are demanding that Brown follow up on his mantra. He can't. When the penny drops and the mob calls his bluff, I predict trouble.

So, has Brown inadvertently handed over a propaganda coup to the far right? He's already as popular as a fart in a spacesuit and this will not do him or Liebour any good. In fact I can see no good to come out of this at all.

[rasoforos]

Quite precious...

Politicians so often rely on their voters' economic illiteracy...it is divine justice when it comes back and bites 'em in the bum.

[rory_20_uk]

I would be very interested to know why getting foreign workers was more efficient - the pound is collapsing, yet paying foreigners in Euros is still cheaper!!!

This country needs to get a lot more efficient. Sacking droves of the civil service and reducing the taxes on industry and individuals that pay for them would be the right idea.

[Fragony]

I would be very interested to know why getting foreign workers was more efficient

No trouble with the unions would be my guess.

[rory_20_uk]

No trouble with the unions would be my guess.

That would also be my guess. But since I detest what the unions are - and not what they should be doing (the terms are almost mutually exclusive) I try not to let my kneejerk reaction potentially blind me to other causes of bringing people several thousand miles to do a job that the locals could in theory do.

If blue collar workers and jobs were doing oh so well, then they'd take a hit from the recent economic events - but in many cases they've been struggling to survive the last decade. The good times have helped paper over the cracks. Now the good times are over we've got to face it that what should be the dependable bedrock is overpriced, if not downright inefficient.

Here the government is taking on more and more to do non-jobs or retrain (for what? more middle managers? They have to manage something!)

The problem is from the schools up. Pupils are taught to be creative. That's fine. BUT one's job isn't going to be creative. It's going to be 8-12 hours a day of almost mind numbing drudgery for the most part be that a factor worker, a lawyer or a doctor. OK, so in the last two cases there are the occasional times when one thinks "Wow!", but there are far more coughs, colds or bog standard divorce divorce settlements.

So recognise this fact. Your boss may be a twerp. Deal with it. most shouldn't go to uni, as there's no point. Train on the job - possibly via uni courses.

Here in the UK Indian immigrants are known to do well. Why? No Magic. They came here, worked their bollocks off for 12 or more hours a day for 6 or more days a week so their kids could do better. Their kids often because of this and work damn hard too. That's why for example whites are a minority in medicine.

[rasoforos]

Here in the UK Indian immigrants are known to do well. Why? No Magic. They came here, worked their bollocks off for 12 or more hours a day for 6 or more days a week so their kids could do better. Their kids often because of this and work damn hard too. That's why for example whites are a minority in medicine.

I think it is a widespread phenomenon in Europe.

Most of my manual employees are foreign. It is a laborious job but it pays very well and they are paid very well. Local boys though prefer to stay unemployed and have their mommy feed em than work 6 times a week and overtime, even if they could make money that they can only dream of in an office job.

They will indeed be able to provide a better quality of life and education for their children than your Greek average joe who hasn't worked well into his thirties.

[KukriKhan]

This crisis shakes together a flammable cocktail of emotions: fear, resentment and anger. Fear for your job if you still have one and fear that you may not see work again if you are already unemployed. Resentment that the agony is not being evenly shared and that some will profit from the miseries of others. Anger with the unapologetic financiers who made billions from their follies and left less affluent folk to pick up the bill.

That paragraph, meant to describe UK reaction to the econ squeeze, also perfectly describes the blue-collar level in the US, which only gets whispered about on the street, and never covered by our press.

[Banquo's Ghost]

It was always a fat-headed and dangerous sentiment to be broadcast abroad. In retrospect, that was the speech which revealed Brown to be an unprincipled coward - proven beyond doubt when he bottled out of the trailed election just after. In this precise instance however, I was under the impression that the real cause of concern was not European workers per se but the allegation that the contractors were actively refusing to hire any British workers, in clear contravention of EU law.

The most worrying thing however, is not that the cabinet is out of its collective depth and resembles naught so much as a flock of starlings chasing after the evening gnats. Not even that the BNP continues to profit from such idiocy, as one can trust the natural tendency of the majority of the British to avoid extremism.

No, it seems to me that the biggest danger is a still unformed and principle-less Conservative Party. If New Labour confuses with its Big Idea of the Day, Every Today* (BIDET) initiatives, the Tories seem paralysed in the headlights. They gainsay, but offer only fantasy, if anything. George Osbourne (who one would think should be in his element, Chancellor-in-waiting with no actual responsibility to burden) is mute, directionless and seen so rarely that twitchers claim a sighting as a ten-pointer. The Opposition should be crucifying the government, and yet they seem to be content to wait, rather than lead. The last time a Labour government sold the country into slavery and despair, there was Mrs Thatcher. Say what you might about her, no-one could accuse her of lacking principles or leadership, nor of shirking from saying what she believed was right for the country. And the UK was, in the main, grateful.

I'm aware this is modern day politics to a tee, and that whipping out one's principles in public is considered akin to child abuse. Nonetheless, given eleven years of the least principled bunch of shysters in UK history, one might think the electorate keen to find someone who wanted power for more than its own sake.

Depressingly, parties like the BNP are likely to fill that gap more and more often, as they most certainly want power to do something.

(As an aside, friends within the Mother of Parliaments have whispered that the Prime Minister has been found, more than once, weeping in a side room. Given the rumours about his mental health last year, this may be no more than scurrilous gossip, but it is disturbing - and not something the papers are likely to break).

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