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Freedom of movement

I wonder how many brextards realise that this will continue after 29/03, even in the event of No Deal simply by the virtue that no feasible infrastructure exists for stopping it.

They're going to be fuming on 30/03 when a load of Polish lads tip on an easyjet flight looking for some bathrooms to tile.

The real tragedy is that free movement towards the UK will continue (assuming the country doesn't turn into such a shithole that no one actually bothers coming) but free movement the other way will be severely restricted.

I was thinking about this, just about everyone who serves me is Eastern European, Pret Staff, Ticket Inspector, Supermarket checkout, Uber, builder, cleaner, window cleaner, waiting staff, barmen/woman. Where are they going to find replacements for these people if they have to go/want to go?

Where are they going to find replacements for these people if they have to go/want to go?

From the local under/unemployed populace? Might have to pay a fair wage first though. Whether or not it makes sense economically in the short term, as a goal I'd support it.

You don't know that's what the locals are saying. In fact I'd doubt it.

If they're significantly better off in work than on benefits the low or semi skilled have no reason not to work. At present we have a race to the bottom where Eastern Europeans are happy to work for less. Great for me but not for those Labour are supposed to represent.

“I voted Brexit because it’s against my best interests but in the interests of the poor people. Honest.”

You mean like I pay £50 a year to the Labour Party? That's also against my personal interest. I just believe in the working classes being given a leg-up and always have.

Also I didn't vote leave, but that doesn't mean I don't respect the result.

people from Saunthorpe with three GCSEs 

While I admire your passion for this stuff, you really are a condescending snob at times. You're almost a caricature of a metropolitan remainer.

What about people from Saunthorpe with 8 GCSEs? Are they any more worthy of jobs paying a decent wage?

Also lol @ 30k. You'd live like a king in Scunny on that.

So if we look past my exaggerating for comic effect (yes I know I sound like a snob and I really don't give a shit at this point - better a snob than someone who brought the country to its knees through selfishness and stupidity), you can't actually explain how Brexit will result in more and better paid employment opportunities for working class leave voters in deprived areas. 

I mean, shit, man, you're making even less effort than the people who just say "supply and demand, duhhhh!" 

No need for handbags.  

Whether or not you like Brexit the vote shows that there is serious discontent with the current state of things.  That’s not surprising when one set of ideas (expressed with different rhetoric and emphasis) has been continuously in power since 1979.   

Personally, I think Brexit is stupid and disastrous but the Brexit vote was a great wake-up call.  If we ignore it then next time they might come for us with pitchforks and torches rather than a vote.

Finally, when it comes to labour supply we have about seven million people of working age in the U.K. who don’t work in a paid job.  Some of them are housewives / mums with young children / actually unable to work.  Many are not.  But when immigrants will come and do things for an amount that means they have to sleep six to a room, don’t expect natives to refuse a life on benefits which often gives them a house of their own.  

 

 

 

The majority of people on benefits are working. 

And the Romanians sleeping six to a room are not usually doing the kind of jobs which are suitable for British people with families to feed. 

Take agriculture, for example. I heard a farmer talking about this on the radio. He needs a lot of labour for about three to four months of the year. People from Eastern Europe come and pick the fruit every summer, they work long hours six days a week, they sleep on site, they make what is actually quite a lot of money, and then they go home at the end of the season. Some of them are teachers in their home country who do it for extra income in the summer. These jobs aren't suitable for British people. Unless you live very close to the farm you need to be running a car to get there, which would eat into your earnings quite a bit. The hours are very long, which is no good for people with families and children. And it ends abruptly after four months, after which point you are unemployed and it will take you six weeks to get back onto benefits. The tax and benefits systems just aren't set up to make seasonal working a viable option for people who live in the UK all year round.

As for people living "six to a room" in London and working in a car wash or a cafe do you really think that when those people are no longer living in London, the car wash or cafe owner is going to have to find the money to pay people a large enough salary to have a room of their own (or a place of their own, if they have children)? Of course not. It's hard enough to do that on a teacher or nurse's salary. The car wash or cafe owner will just have to survive on fewer staff or close their business altogether (which means those of their staff who are not from Eastern Europe also lose their jobs).

Even if those six people go home, it's not even going to ease the pressure on housing stock that much, if they are all sharing one room. 

Sorry Anna that’s bollocks.  Brits have done fruit picking seasonal jobs sleeping on the floor for a few months for ever, and many other similar jobs. The idea that locals can’t do them is, actually, racist. They might not want to do them, that’s different. 

It's been a while since I've read the evidence, but so far as I understand immigration doesn't have an overall impact on access to employment and wages, but when that's split down across skill and wage distribution, immigration has a positive impact on higher skilled well paid workers and a negative impact on lower paid workers to the point of a 1% increase in immigration leads to a 0.2 - 0.6% overall reduction in wages for the lowest skilled workers. I'm not going to bother looking up the figures again, but that's about right, I think. Effectively, in low-skill economies like agriculture immigrant workforce merely replaces the indigenous workforce. That issue for the low skilled/low paid is compounded by the impact that immigration has on access to services, particularly in deprived areas. 

If you extrapolate that information across the economy you can see why somewhere like London sees immigration as a good thing -- the idea that immigrants 'do the jobs that the indigenous population doesn't want to do' is a benefit and provides a service sector that's appropriate for their lifestyle and working practices. If you extrapolate that to areas that are already depressed (largely due to a purposeful re-balancing of the economy away from manufacturing, industry etc. to financial services) then even a small amount of immigration is going to have a disproportionately adverse impact on the indigenous population. And that's before you go into the impact immigration has on culture, community etc. etc. which are far less measurable more personal issues for people. 

So the question of whether immigration is a good thing requires a far more nuanced answer than 'yes' or 'no'. With regard to lower skilled workers' access to work, many industries have for many years based their entire business model on access to cheap labour. So, suggesting that lower skilled workers will see a short-term improvement in wages is naive (longer term, maybe. Depends). As with most things that led to the Brexit win for leave the real issue is that businesses were allowed for a long time to rely on cheap labour and the indigenous workers were not given the access to services, education etc. to enable them to take advantage of immigration (that somewhere like London has, for example). 

One of the impacts of brexit will be the return of the automatic car wash at petrol stations which have almost died out due to cheap eastern european labour.

Good time to invest in the car wash machine game m7s

The downside is that people won't be able to afford cars 

How many Brits do it now, Cookie?

And how do they get round the issues I outlined above?

I mean, no offence, but I am more inclined to believe people who actually work in the agricultural industry than I am to believe you.

Not as many as there will be when farmers have no more cheap semi-slave labour coming from abroad... ...British farming will become more mechanised and about time.

If you are listening to farmers then most still want Brexit.

It's going to be pretty funny on 30th March when the hordes of Norwegians who turn up at Aberdeen airport to work offshore are turned away and basically north sea oil production will stop.

I think Brexiteers got confused by what was meant when they were warned that No Deal could mean brown outs / black outs.

Er, if it's becoming more mechanised then that will mean fewer jobs for people, not more. Brexit means that is likely to come sooner for the farms which are able to invest in that kind of technology, but many of the smaller ones will go bust. The farmers who actually have a grip on these kinds of details are appalled by Brexit. The ones who know how to run a farm inside out but aren't so hot on international trade (like most people, to be fair) probably still trust the government to tell them the truth.

Unfortunately the minister for farming, who happens to be an absolute imbecile, has been touring the country for years telling them they'll all be better off out of the EU, and unfortunately he looks like a trustworthy sort.

Lady P... ...it’s hard to take your views seriously because they basically distill down through your confirmation bias to ‘everyone who supports Brexit is an imbecile and everyone who is against Brexit is fabulous’.

That's not actually true, but I can confirm the minister for farming is indeed an imbecile. He is so painfully dim-witted I am quite surprised he can even write his own name.

Farmers voted for Brexit because they saw it as a one off chance to reform an industry ruined by successive governments and the EU...

...nothing has changed on that front.

Erm, loads of people go fruitpicking in the summer. The comments from industry are aimed at maxing their options for the pool of labour they need to ensure their businesses survive. As you would expect. 

 

We have record low unemployment at the moment, and its been like that for a while. The only way Britons will pick up the slack post brexit is if the country goes into meltdown and unemployment rockets.

its so fvcked up. The only mechanism by which brits get jobs out of brexit is because the country goes down the pan. Oh man.

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