Monday 11 February 2008

British jobs for British workers ...?

Yet again this, along with all the chat about 'sustainable growth' has been unveiled as complete tosh. The Telegraph reports that there are now 2 million foreign-born workers in the UK, but there are half a million fewer British-born people in work than six or seven years ago.

Which we have known for months, by the way, but it's good to see it on the front of the paper again; 'public sector jobs for foreign workers' is a bit closer to the mark.

5 comments:

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

MW

Sightly - but not completely - off-topic. We were told in Saturday's Telegraph that an illegal immigrant had been employed at the House of Commons. Funnily enough a day earlier I (along with another 5 million employers) had received a threatening letter from the promising all hell would break loose if we dared employ someone who was not legally allowed to work here. BTW - and I quote - "not knowing is no excuse". I look forward to the prosecution of whoever is responsible for this gross contravention of employment law by the House of Commons. I suspect I'm in for a long wait.

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

MW

Sorry about the post - the "a" tags seem not to work properly. Anyway - I wanted to link to the Border & Immigration Agency site at http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/employers/

Mark Wadsworth said...

U, good point, there was yet another story wasn't there? Why on earth should employers be forced to check people's residence status when the government itself is totally incapable? Disgusting, really.

M said...

Immigration forces down wages, which helps Brown meet his inflation targets. It's also a short-term fix to skills and education problems that have not been addressed over the last 10 years despite lots of wasted cash and even more meaningless posturing.

Anonymous said...

Goering is supposed to have said that every time he heard the word "culture", he grabbed his revolver. Every time I hear the phrase "sustainable growth", I feel like doing the same thing - permit permitting, of course.

Nothing is "sustainable" into the indefinite future. It's another ridiculous buzzword which has no function except to forestall reasoned criticism of the "progressive" assumption hidden in a slogan. If there's a choice, why would anyone prefer "unsustainable growth" of the economy, the forests, etc.?