Opinion – How reliant is Britain on EU migrant workers? – The Conversation – John Gelmini

Dr Alf probably knows that EU workers are concentrated in areas of the economy such as agriculture, hospitality and tourism, where unproductive and often lazy British workers do not want to work and would rather turn to the dole or operate in the Black Economy.

Brexit was partially about the concentrations of such workers, in places like Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the ownership by Poles of recruitment agencies that primarily deal with Eastern Europeans and do not deal with UK workers because employers locally do not want them. Much of the objections to Remain were not really about sovereignty at all but were a backlash against the Government’s supine approach to radical Muslims, rogue mosques and the lax approach to border controls which has seen the number of illegal immigrants swell to more than 8 million. Hospitals, sink schools and local authority Social Services Departments rely on a mixture of EU migration and the importation of Indian doctors, plus and people from Africa to undertake workloads that the indigenous population is currently not able to handle. The issue is about productivity or lack of it from UK workers, the fact that it has fallen to 46% in the private sector and less than 37% in the public sector.

With fat cat pay for bosses, it is difficult to persuade people to do a fair days work so the politicians have until now chosen to sidestep the issue. Until they confront it, Dr Alf is right to say that there is little alternative to further immigration, but confront it they must otherwise we will have a population of 80 million people and rising but not enough infrastructure to support it.

Tough measures are needed:
1) Link fat cat pay to monitorable performance and end rewards for failure.
2) Bring Sir Philip Green to heel by compelling his wife to fund the BHS pension funds from which he clearly borrowed money before selling BHS to bankrupt and scoundrel Dominic Chappell for £1 GBP–Sir Philip runs all his other businesses very well so he knew or must have known the true financial state of BHS before he unloaded it.
3)Try Dominic Chappell for fraud
4)End the NHS, MOD revolving door; privatise the BBC
5)Fire striking train drivers, tube drivers and postal staff and legislate against strikes in essential public services.
Replace them with people made redundant from the Army and the Reserves until these essential public services can be automated
6)Insist on higher productivity for UK workers and make it harder for sacked workers who have lost their jobs for laziness or lack of productivity to get dole so quickly or at the same level Worker productivity at the Port Talbot steelworks has risen by 40% since the plant was threatened with closure and it has actually made a small profit while the talks between Mittal and Thyssen Krupp continue so with shock treatment British workers can be shocked out of their torpor but the political will has to be there and the political class have to lead by example.

John Gelmini

Opinion – The Hidden Debt Burden of Emerging Markets by Carmen Reinhart – Project Syndicate – John Gelmini

Irish version of a 1939 British poster, create...

Irish version of a 1939 British poster, created in response to the 2010 Irish banking crisis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like Dr Alf, I am optimistic too because as the Chinese ambassador said last night on Channel 4 whilst making mincemeat of the left-wing news presenter Jon Snow, the fundamentals of the Chinese economy were strong.

The last banking crisis was, of course, an engineered collapse, designed to look like something that the public throughout the world had caused through their own profligacy supposedly egged on by bankers recklessly lending money to people with no prospect of repayment.

This is why before the crisis there was plenty of money but during it there was supposedly none followed by a situation in which the top 1/10th of 1% of people suddenly doubled their money and had it all transmuted into gold bullion, buy to leave properties, fine art, gems and expensive real estate.

There will be a repeat of this at some future point but the Chinese are better prepared than they were the first time as are many of the developing countries.

This does not mean that the financial wolves have been bested but since more people know who they are,how they operate and to a certain extent how they think the road ahead for them is a little harder although the right wars, provided that they are containable, can provide the opportunity they seek.

John Gelmini