vexen

If I'm right it's down to the restaurant boom at the minute and the need for cheaper food supplies. End result is the wages are shite. Which is why the immigrants get it as they don't mind being 27 to a room in their living conditions.

Supply and demand bebbeh.

It's not the cheap end that accounts for all the immigrants, for example, over a half of all our NHS doctors and nurses qualified abroad. That's a very well-paid bracket and a far fly from the cheap-labout scenario that the newspapers tend to report on.

Erm, NHS wages are awful in todays climate. That's why we have to use so many immigrants. It's common for doctors to be doing work above their grade as the NHS simply cannot afford to get the right staff in. Personally I like the NHS, but they are in a very tight situation and as such really get no choice.

Yeah I think you're right about NHS wages actually

Yet they're paying hospital "managers" obscene wages of hundreds of thousands of pounds to do bugger all (except twitch the trouser legs and wave old school ties about...) whilst nurses struggle.

Indeed. There is a very large argument for organised corruption out there. Tony's cronies was the tip of it.

Basically if you control the market you control the competition and any threat to your income. This is why managers often stick together, and will only turn on each other wen there is solid proof of mis-doings. It's about protecting jobs rather than getting it right.

Unfortunately this is what happens when a govt says it's ok to lie.

Actually, it's todays climate that has created this. Wages have not gone up ( there's a suprise ) where as the cost of living keeps going up. The end result is the poor get poorer and the need for seriously cheap labour ( so that the managers in the smaller businesses out there can afford a reasonable level of living ) means immigrants. As they do not mind being paid shite to work.

Their work ethic is fantastic fair enough, but all it's done is allowed the current climate to simply get worse.

Some good points, I'm pleased you've raised them!

There are other forces shaping the disparity between rich and poor, but, sociologists have bemoaned for quite a while that even in rich countries the difference is getting bigger!

Unfortunately it's handy to have a poor workforce. It keeps the call centers in this country for example. Also means it's much harder for companies to get caught doing naughty things. This is called the 'incentive to work'. You get nothing if you don't work ( fair enough ), and a little more if you do work. Just don't rock the boat or you won't work. It makes me think of the Chinese economic miracle in a way. And the atrocious human rights record it's been done on.

And you wonder why kids these days don't bother. There's nothing to believe in so why bother?

Having benefited both economically and personally from the EU freedom of migration and employment, I am convinced that it is an excellent thing both for our commerce and our culture.

In the worst case, the loss to England is merely a redistribution and equalisation of wealth with the poorer countries of the union. Though it may sting us in the short term, I consider that equality is in everyone's interest in the long run. And personally I like the Poles well enough not to begrudge them a little balancing-out.

Shit, am I starting to turn into a libertarian?

Economically speaking, your libertarianism is speaking for itself!

But then again, facts are facts...

Thanks for setting out those stats (and doing the research for me ;p).

They also only make reference to "new jobs" rather than taking into account pre-existing jobs, which makes the statistics very bent out of proportion.

Did you see the hideous Daily Mail take on it? It riled me so much I made my first complaint to the Press Complaints Committee!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=501128&in_page_id=1770

Thanks for that link - I'd seen their headline on a newsstand, which is what first prompted my outbreak of statistics.

Good luck with the PCC!

One of these days I am seriously going to go for the Guest Editor slot Of the Today program which they offer to a group from the public over the christmas period each year and have the program focus on listing all the bulshit that has been in the press that year.

It would be great to be able to produce a program with decent researchers who could go through all the press front pages for a year and find out which Head lines turned out to be factualy inacurate (I guess 80%+ but that is a guess) and what front page articles turned out not to actualy show the full truth on the front page (About 50%+) and how many still bent the truth seriously on the inside page follow up article (Probably still quite a lot).

This year I had little time, but one year.

*grin* Govt in 'Whoops, we screwed up again' shockah.

Getting my dancing shoes for that big ol' grave ;)

Just remember that there are different immigrants and you have the right to choose who do you let in.
Statistics help: Regarding emplyment in Finland here and crimes here, latter in Finnish. Shows mainly that the groups that integrate worst come from Middle East and Somalia and in other end are immigrants from within EU and USA who do as well or better than aboriginals.

But it is indeed shame that western countries choose rather to import cheap labor than raise the wages of lower end jobs. Aboriginals would do cleaning gladly if it would make enough to keep ones family in lower-middleclass.