It depresses the hell out of me to say this but the imported labour isn't just cheap as the drawbridge up brigade shout (loudly) it is invariably higher quality. Anecdotal evidence supports this including any attempt anyone makes to hire a cleaner.

A colleague was very Britain first and went through a string of English cleaners. All useless some fundamentally dishonest. The last straw was when he had to go home and found the cleaner sprawled out on his couch watching his telly and drinking his wine!

So he engaged a Pole. Job done. Top notch. Until she relocated to Germany of all places. One push factor was (you may be satisfied to know) Brexit; that and receiving anonymous letters from brave kindly souls urging her to "go home vermin"

Makes you proud.

Just to be clear Hugenots, Irish, African Asians, HK Chinese, EU nationals and the 50,000 Poles who seamlessly assimilated after the War were largely successes. Mixed views on others and one group has largely been a failure for this country.

I mention this as responses to my post suggests I am a door open for all type. Not true. We are weaker and poorer for some post War calamitous errors; but free movement to EU nationals was a complete success in my view as it filled a skill gap created by poor education
/ training and an ageing population with literate Europeans. One of the reasons posts like Tom's irritates is that they also largely dutifully paid tax and helped finance triple lock pensions and other vote bribes for the elderly who then largely voted to kick them out!

Like I said all done to death on here but I am just making my view clear as you may have thought I was coming from a different place.

Exactly why bother training your own population when you can import them. Employers and governments (both parties) need to address this issue. We also need to explain to the unemployed that entry level jobs are not below them.

If after all that we still need to import people then fine but not at this moment unless they have skills.

One more point

There may be an argument for temporary work permits.....which was always possible.

I didn't really want to makes these arguments but business needs are one thing....but we first have a duty to the youth and general worker of this nation before anyone else's....and that should be the case in every country.

We have had decades of recruitment attitudes that have directly ignored that....and that's been allowed to happen.

If English farm pickers are lazy it's because the culture has allowed for that.....if the will is there the culture can be changed.

Edited by Stirlingsays (04 Jul 2021 1.47pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

The other thing to remember is that many jobs will go due to technology.

The banks have been trying to close their branch networks for decades but of course every closure is met with local opposition understandably.

My bank in Beckenham has hardly been open during the pandemic and when it has it's hours have not been reliable. We are all expecting it to close at some point.

It maybe that some temporary permits might be required but in the medium term we need to retrain our workforce and more importantly make it clear to the employers that it is their responsibility.

The taxpayer has given companies billions to hep them stay afloat I think we are entitled to get something back.

One more point

As I have said many times on here, the contracts given to EE farm workers are nothing more than slave Labour ( I have seen them). Now if people are happy to support slave Labour so be it.
My son, who is not a scrote , applied for farm work last year having lost his job, but was not considered as was not prepared to live,on site, in a s*** caravan shared with complete strangers.

Surely if a company leaves here to go to Romania or any other european country , to gain access to the e.u market, and as you say pay less for the workforce, then we are in big trouble. Every business wants maximum profit, and if that"s in the e.u, paying less wages for entry in to the biggest trade block, then more will follow. It makes sense to me if you are a business owner-even if it"s getting cheap labour, but in a different country where the cost of living is also a lot cheaper.