The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[sidcow]

Sooooo.  For those brighter than me, is this EU offer on NI trade a problem solver? Will we be all good now? 

[ml1dch]

36 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Sooooo.  For those brighter than me, is this EU offer on NI trade a problem solver? Will we be all good now? 

I make no claim on the qualification that you ask for, but it'll be no surprise to learn that It's Complicated. 

If you take both parties at their word, then maybe, but probably not. If you don't (and you shouldn't) then definitely not.

There's nothing short of the destruction of the EU and guards with machine guns on the border that would keep some people happy. So a bit more flexibility on  sausages and medicines isn't going to cut it for them. And lots of those people are in significant positions of power or have the ear of those that are.

Most likely seems to be that this is just theatre, the EU try to look pragmatic and magnanimous so that when the UK rips everything up then they are the bad guys rejecting the reasonable proposals. 

Nothing will be "good" whatever happens. It's all degrees of bad. If enough people play nice, then this is one of the best versions of bad. But they probably won't. 

Edited October 13, 2021 by ml1dch

[Genie]

Foreign pig farmers now also make the VIP list for a UK visa.

[sidcow]

And today more relaxation for lorry drivers. 

It's almost as if they had no idea how stopping foreign workers would impact us. 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

And today more relaxation for lorry drivers. 

It's almost as if they had no idea how stopping foreign workers would impact us. 

Yeah whoda fought that making forin lorry drivers go home empty was a great efficient thing to do that wouldn't disrupt the supply chain one bit

Yep that's right, no-one in their right mind apart from Tories

[Genie]

So the theory was we’d get rid of all the lower paid / lower skilled EU workers and then replace them with local workers… but the local workers don’t want to do crap jobs for crap pay, who’d have thought it?

[StefanAVFC]

Just now, Genie said:

So the theory was we’d get rid of all the lower paid / lower skilled EU workers and then replace them with local workers… but the local workers don’t want to do crap jobs for crap pay, who’d have thought it?

Isn't this *spits* a case for Brexit?

If EU immigration made those jobs so unworthy and so badly paid, isn't it a good thing we can be free of the shackles of Brussels and raise wages of good, honest, proper British workers?

[Genie]

10 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Isn't this *spits* a case for Brexit?

If EU immigration made those jobs so unworthy and so badly paid, isn't it a good thing we can be free of the shackles of Brussels and raise wages of good, honest, proper British workers?

If we raise wages for these jobs that we’re desperately short of now then it’ll push up prices, increase inflation, make us less competitive overall. 

We’d have people willing to pick fruit and veg for example, but it would become more expensive to sell and make importing from places overseas a cheaper option.

 

[tinker]

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

If we raise wages for these jobs that we’re desperately short of now then it’ll push up prices, increase inflation, make us less competitive overall. 

We’d have people willing to pick fruit and veg for example, but it would become more expensive to sell and make importing from places overseas a cheaper option.

 

The race to the  bottom for workers wages and rights. Real problem is the massive amounts of profits the middle men are talking out of the supply chain, it pushes prices up and drives wages down just so a few people can have a massive yacht or a trip into space. 

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, tinker said:

The race to the  bottom for workers wages and rights. Real problem is the massive amounts of profits the middle men are talking out of the supply chain, it pushes prices up and drives wages down just so a few people can have a massive yacht or a trip into space. 

True, there’s an element of that, but our government have shown already that outside of the shackles of the EU they want to reduce working conditions not improve them.

Same with the environment, those pesky EU rules were stopping us pump untreated sewerage into rivers and onto beaches. 

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, tinker said:

The race to the  bottom for workers wages and rights. Real problem is the massive amounts of profits the middle men are talking out of the supply chain, it pushes prices up and drives wages down just so a few people can have a massive yacht or a trip into space. 

No, that really isn't the case. The middlemen are generally supermarkets and they drive the wholesale prices down not up. Yes they are taking the money and it drives wages down but it doesn't push prices up, it generally pulls them down

You only have to look at what the supermarkets have done to the milk industry to see this in action.

Supermarket shares like Tesco et al are held by a lot of pension funds, so it isn't the simple rich / poor dynamic that you are painting either.

[Davkaus]

43 minutes ago, Genie said:

If we raise wages for these jobs that we’re desperately short of now then it’ll push up prices, increase inflation, make us less competitive overall.

 

International competition is a fair argument, but wage rises don't increase prices proportionally to the wage rise, and if the prices of products can't sustain a livable income for the workers, the price needs to go up, or the business should be left to fail.

[bickster]

Forget the Truck driver distractions... Data Protection rules are the one of the major "red tape" rules the Govt wanted to get rid of and it's happening and not in a good way

Quote

VANDALISING YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

Anything you say and do can and will be used against you. With ‘Data: a new direction’, the UK Government is proposing a bonfire of information rights that will open the floodgates to weaponising personal data against British residents.

Every day, we produce vast amounts of information. All these data trails can be temporary, or they can go down on your permanent record. They can be used for what we intended (buying something, watching a video) — or they can be exploited for commercial interests, disclosed to the authorities, and used to discriminate against us. Whether it goes one way or the other is a matter of policy and of practice.

The proposed UK data protection framework would give unprecedented freedom to reuse personal data against the will of the individuals concerned, for good and bad purposes alike. The few remaining legal boundaries would be undermined in practice by watered down accountability rules, weaker supervision, and increased bureaucracy for individuals seeking redress.

Last week we focused on the UK Government failure to articulate a good reason to water down UK data protection rules. In this blog, we focus on the policies that would make distrust and exploitation the price to pay for using UK digital services....

Open Rights Group (more on link)

Abusing our data is abusing our Human Rights

[tomav84]

3 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Isn't this *spits* a case for Brexit?

If EU immigration made those jobs so unworthy and so badly paid, isn't it a good thing we can be free of the shackles of Brussels and raise wages of good, honest, proper British workers?

did the EU set our minimum wage structure? genuine question...i'm not clued up enough on the topic,i just thought our government could set minumum wage to whatever they wanted whether we were in the EU or not

and they tried to get the furloughed british to pick fruit when covid hit and the romanians/polish/bulgarians went home. no one wanted to do it, because it's back breaking labour for 12 hours a day starting at 7am. i dare say it's not the money that put people off doing those jobs, but i might be wrong

[bickster]

44 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

id the EU set our minimum wage structure?

No

They set a minimum wage structure but ours certainly was above theirs when we left

[bickster]

49 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

no one wanted to do it, because it's back breaking labour for 12 hours a day starting at 7am. i dare say it's not the money that put people off doing those jobs, but i might be wrong

You'd be absolutely bang on with that. Before the forrins came to do it, it was a student summer job. Students aren't doing that shit any more

[sidcow]

57 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

did the EU set our minimum wage structure? genuine question...i'm not clued up enough on the topic,i just thought our government could set minumum wage to whatever they wanted whether we were in the EU or not

and they tried to get the furloughed british to pick fruit when covid hit and the romanians/polish/bulgarians went home. no one wanted to do it, because it's back breaking labour for 12 hours a day starting at 7am. i dare say it's not the money that put people off doing those jobs, but i might be wrong

 

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

You'd be absolutely bang on with that. Before the forrins came to do it, it was a student summer job. Students aren't doing that shit any more

I think I've mentioned this before but I remember a teacher telling me the highest paid job he had as a student was at a washing machine powder company just dropping a cup in each box of powder on the conveyor. 

They had to pay loads to attract anyone and no one stuck it for more than a week or two because it was so mind numbing.  He quit after a couple of weeks himself for lower paid work. 

OK I'm sure that job is now mechanised but it shows the principal that sometimes people just don't want to do a job even for decent money. 

I've a client who had a similar problem finding people to pack photographic film into boxes.  For some reason it was really difficult to get machines to do it and they had all sorts of problems getting people to do it.  That obviously solved itself when digital took over.  I remember him telling me in a meeting that digital cameras had outsold traditional film cameras for the first time that year. 

[StefanAVFC]

1 hour ago, tomav84 said:

did the EU set our minimum wage structure?

No, but if a migrant will come here and do x job for minimum wage, why would companies pay more? Not my view, but a point for Brexit I've seen.

[tinker]

8 hours ago, bickster said:

No, that really isn't the case. The middlemen are generally supermarkets and they drive the wholesale prices down not up. Yes they are taking the money and it drives wages down but it doesn't push prices up, it generally pulls them down

You only have to look at what the supermarkets have done to the milk industry to see this in action.

Supermarket shares like Tesco et al are held by a lot of pension funds, so it isn't the simple rich / poor dynamic that you are painting either.

The middlemen are the owners of the supermarkets and websites like Amazon. If you don't think they make huge amounts of money then I think you are wrong, very wrong.How else do you think they can afford their extravagant lifestyles? Do you think they run their companies for the benefit of their employees or the consumers? 

[LondonLax]

Protectionist policies like Brexit will cause inflation. It will result in wage inflation for unskilled labour (good!) but that increase will be passed on to the consumer with the price paid at final point of sale (not so good).

It’s also a less efficient system when you have a smaller labour pool to draw from. Instead of getting the best person available from the whole continent you only have the talent pool of one country to choose from.

Imagine the Premier League with only British players, would the quality of the work produced by the teams suffer? I think undoubtedly. On the other hand, a bunch of local lads would get a game in the big time who otherwise would only have managed lower leagues. 

Edited October 15, 2021 by LondonLax