Brexit process

[stumuz1]

Isn't the problem not that they're not paid enough to do it, instead it's that they're too lazy to get off their fat arses and work for their money. You'd have to pay the available works £50k/yr to do some of farm jobs the eastern europeans do for min wage and even then half would quit.

A quick question for you.
The minimum wage in Bulgaria is €1.50 an hour.
The minimum wage in UK is €8.64 an hour.

So the unskilled Bulgarian worker gets an extra 576% in wages by moving to the UK to work.

If you are a unskilled UK worker which country can you move to, to earn €49.76 and hour, or €103.292 a year ?

The system is rigged against UK workers.

[cubes]

You could offer those unemployed UK workers a more reasonable £15/hour and you still wouldn't get nearly enough to get it done. They simply don't want to do this kind of physical labour. If they're in their 50s I can understand why but not if they're in their 20s. You've yet to actually counter my point though, you really think the average unemployed british 'worker' would do this? Telling me the bulgarian min wage is far less than uk one tells me nothing about how to make uk workers take up these jobs.

[stumuz1]

Simple. Offer the unemployed 50 quid an hour! See if that doesn't motivate them.

I take your point about UK workers not wanting to work for the min wage, but the min wage does not provide basic goods in the UK (house etc).

Now if you increase the min wage for UK workers by 579%. You watch them queue up for work.

[fuzzy]

It might help if cubes could be more specific about which farm jobs he is thinking of? Or is it just a feeling from watching countryfile? There are always farmers whining that they can't get any unemployed - who are living in £300 - 600 a week rent [housing benefit paid], to do 2 weeks strawberry picking or asparagus cutting, with the other 50 weeks unemployed, while the dole remove their benefit and rent payments for 4 months because they can't be arsed to sort out the change of circumstances. AFAIK, the british unemployed are not even offered to become itinerant farm workers, since the workers are arranged in Europe by work gangs and their main work will be in europe where presumably the harvests are staggered allowing work over the summer. If you really want to turn over the stone of Norman ruled england, explain how the chinese cockle pickers who drowned in morecambe bay fit in? WTF were they doing here?? How come when you shout 'stop police' in a london tube and the terrorist squad shoot because you didn't comply, it turns out the bloke is a brazillian student working illegally in the UK, as an electrician - a job that anyone in the UK has to pass ongoing jobsworth assessment to do? The entire UK employment situation stinks because whitehall coudn't care less.

[stumuz1]

First, I agree with your post

the workers are arranged in Europe

Are you sitting comfortably i will tell you a story!

When I was about 14 and on my journey to be finally expelled from school the main threat teachers would aim in my direction was,

"if you don't get any qualifications you'll end up in Chuckie chicken"

If you are a certain age you will recall that Chuckie chicken was a brand of oven ready frozen chicken.

One of their processing factories was about 10 miles from the school. It still is a food factory owned by the two sisters group (Indian company)

The present workforce in this small Welsh town is almost entirely Eastern European. If you want a min wage job there (never advertised) you need to travel to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire for an interview. The employment agency is run by Eastern Europeans.

You cannot blame them for coming over here. 7 times the pay as back home, i have heard stories of farms being bought for cash in Lativa that have been tenanted for hundreds of years by their families.

The incentive to cross a continent and work for treasure is huge.

But where is the incentive for the local youngster to do the same?

Story over.

[Lord Beria3]

Truth is that a minority of young Brits think that physical labour jobs are "beneath" them.

The irony is that these same kids didn't work hard at school and have limited options in life yet look down at the "migrant" work.

Of course, higher wages and better conditions might attract some locals to do jobs currently done by migrants but not many.

I know somebody is a director of a major farm. They offered young unemployed Brits the opportunity to work in the farm doing processing work (its tough work but it is work) and most gave up within 24 hours.

Polish lads and girls do it every day for months without moaning.

Bottom line - a small minority of British young are bone idle.

[Little John]

It's not a lack of "higher wages" that is the problem. It is a lack of wages sufficient to pay the rent and bills that is the problem.

You jokers don't know what you are talking about

[fuzzy]

First, I agree with your post

the workers are arranged in Europe

Are you sitting comfortably i will tell you a story!

When I was about 14 and on my journey to be finally expelled from school the main threat teachers would aim in my direction was,

"if you don't get any qualifications you'll end up in Chuckie chicken"

If you are a certain age you will recall that Chuckie chicken was a brand of oven ready frozen chicken.

One of their processing factories was about 10 miles from the school. It still is a food factory owned by the two sisters group (Indian company)

The present workforce in this small Welsh town is almost entirely Eastern European. If you want a min wage job there (never advertised) you need to travel to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire for an interview. The employment agency is run by Eastern Europeans.

You cannot blame them for coming over here. 7 times the pay as back home, i have heard stories of farms being bought for cash in Lativa that have been tenanted for hundreds of years by their families.

The incentive to cross a continent and work for treasure is huge.

But where is the incentive for the local youngster to do the same?

Story over.

I know these stories. I have worked with migrants who often have farmland back home and are working here. I know that these jobs are arranged overseas and the agencies have properties in the UK to house itinerant zero hours overseas workers. I have worked alongside them. I hope you ditch tyrell crisps. In an area of low opportunity the factory is filled with poles. It is the same generally countrywide. It is a joke that the NHS is filled with overseas workers, when local workers [of whom about 10% male will have some criminal record and will not bother filling in 27 pages of application crap] would be rejected. The taboo question of: - why someone who cannot get ahead in their own modern country, or who is avoiding something back home, can then come to the UK and state any garbage as a largely uncheckable history and CV, and then can then get a job that a UK person has no access to, is always avoided.

To say that that the majority of people in the UK don't try to get realistic employment is false. Even if the jobs were there, if there are no jobs that pay enough to cover your overheads, then you would be working for slavery.

[kenneal - lagger]

Isn't the problem not that they're not paid enough to do it, instead it's that they're too lazy to get off their fat arses and work for their money. You'd have to pay the available works £50k/yr to do some of farm jobs the eastern europeans do for min wage and even then half would quit.

A quick question for you.
The minimum wage in Bulgaria is €1.50 an hour.
The minimum wage in UK is €8.64 an hour.

So the unskilled Bulgarian worker gets an extra 576% in wages by moving to the UK to work.

If you are a unskilled UK worker which country can you move to, to earn €49.76 and hour, or €103.292 a year ?

The system is rigged against UK workers.

We've got a Bulgarian worker living in a tent on our land at the moment. He is working three jobs, all minimum wage I would think, to save enough money to go home and start a business there. He is doing it because a) he knows that it is temporary and b) he knows that when he goes home the cash that he has saved will set him up for the rest of his life.

An English lad won't do that because he knows that after a few months he will still not have enough money to get him any where near started in this country because housing is way out of his league and there are few business opportunities left that will pay him a living wage unless he is highly qualified in some way or another.

[Little John]

That is exactly it Ken.

I would go further and say this is not the farmer's fault for employing migrant, itinerant workers. In such a deregulated environment, any farmer who does not take advantage of this situation will be out-competed. So, everyone gets dragged to the party whether they like it or not.

The problem is systemic and the solution will be systemic.

Now, of course, if regulations are put in place that disallows cheap labour to be brought in form abroad, then wages will have to rise to cope with the higher cost of living of indigenous workers. However, this can only go so far before it simply makes no economic sense to even bother farming (or, indeed, to run any number of other businesses that have become trapped into only being viable on the back of cheap labour) due to the increased price of food not being borne by the consumer . At which point, other parts of the economy will end up re-adjusting in order to accommodate higher food prices. Rent's, to take one example, might end up falling. In turn, making it less profitable to be a landlord. In turn, driving down real estate prices.

But, that would be a GOOD THING.

[Lord Beria3]

GREER FORECASTS A NO-DEAL/HARD BREXIT

https://www.ecosophia.net/an-astrologic ... de-brexit/

Key features:

- either no agreement or a bare-bones agreement in March 2019
- disruption in travel, trade and communications in 2019
- major political crisis, with cabinet resignations and just maybe a change of PM
- media in the UK will have a nervous breakdown
- economic boom in Britain post-Brexit as real wages for working Brits rise

Greer's comment to a question re soft or hard Brexit...

Mr. O, I’d expect to see an agreement indicated by an aspect connecting the Sun, the significator of the UK government, with Venus, the ruler of the seventh house and thus the significator of the EU. Since no such aspect exists, it doesn’t look like an agreement will be in place, or if an agreement is reached it may not be worth much (and may not be followed). I’d have to study the ingress charts for the second half of this astrological year (the Libra ingress in September and the Capricorn ingress in December) to be sure, but my impression is that it’s going to be a hard Brexit — not least because the EU, in its inimitable fashion, continues to act as though the only possible compromise is one that gives it everything it wants.

Its clear that there are two options on the table, realistically speaking, as we head towards the deadline.

May is committed to leaving and has prepared a semi-soft deal which hasn't been vetoed yet by the EU. They will discuss it at the next EU council on 20th September, apparently.

Barnier and the Commission hate her proposed plans as per Politico...

https://www.politico.eu/article/europea ... -billions/

The U.K.’s proposal to free itself from Brussels regulations on services would save British businesses billions of pounds a year, according to a briefing for EU27 diplomats by Michel Barnier’s negotiating team.

The EU’s chief negotiator made clear his aversion to the U.K. proposal in an op-ed published earlier this month, arguing that it would “undermine� the EU’s single market. But in a closed briefing for EU27 diplomats in Brussels a day before the Chequers meeting and before the full plan was formally presented as a white paper, Barnier’s team laid out their objections to what they expected from the British scheme in far more detail.

The Commission quoted an internal study, which estimated that if the U.K. is freed from just seven unspecified EU regulations, it would provide savings for British businesses of €6 billion a year, according to two EU officials.

More interestingly, a large bloc of EU member states think May's plan are a non-starter, including Ireland (which would be most affected by a hard Brexit).

Barnier’s team was adamant that if Britain formally put forward the plan then it should boycott the talks altogether, according to two officials. A third official said that the Commission representatives objected to the U.K. proposals, but in less dramatic terms.

The representatives of Denmark, Germany, France, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands agreed that the U.K.’s proposal was “a nonstarter.� But the Dutch, supported by the Belgians and the Hungarians, also said they were content to see how Britain delivered the message, said one of the officials. They convinced the Commission representatives not to give May’s plan an all-out hostile reception.

So, to summarise, a crunch point is looming within 4 weeks. Either the EU will compromise and go with May's semi-soft plans or they will reject her proposals leading to a hard brexit outcome.

[UndercoverElephant]

GREER FORECASTS A NO-DEAL/HARD BREXIT

What happened to "Calm down everybody, we're getting a semi-soft cheese"?

[UndercoverElephant]

So, to summarise, a crunch point is looming within 4 weeks.

Here's my astrological prediction: the can will be kicked again. First until November, and then until January. Then panic will take over, and it is anybody's guess.

[Lord Beria3]

GREER FORECASTS A NO-DEAL/HARD BREXIT

What happened to "Calm down everybody, we're getting a semi-soft cheese"?

I assumed that the EU political leadership, in particular Merkel and Macron, will show a modicum of strategic awareness and follow their own economic self interest by compromising their own red lines (now that the UK has done the same) and agree to a semi soft deal.

It might be last minute but they would see sense.

That assumption is fading and Greers post has crystilised my growing doubts about the most likely outcome.

We will see soon whether the hardliners or the pragmatic factions win within the EU. The latest public statements from Macron and Merkel on the single market are not looking good for May.

By the end of September my base line scenario is looking likely to shift from a semi soft deal to a hard Brexit with limited mini agreements to avoid total disruption post Brexit.

[UndercoverElephant]

Getting a deal now requires Merkel, Macron and the rest of the EU to offer the UK something that Theresa May can sell to both wings of her own party, and get through parliament. I am struggling to imagine what such a deal would look like, given the intractability of the Irish Border Problem, the fragility of Theresa May's grip on power and the incompatible red lines of the various interested parties.

I don't see it happening. An extension of A50 is possible, TM being toppled by her own party is possible, a GE is possible and a second referendum is possible, but a major deal is looking less likely than any of them. A minimal deal to keep the lights on in NI, medical supplies flowing and planes in the air, is likely.

My best guess is that the europhile wing of the tory party will pull the plug on this government as it becomes clear that we are indeed heading towards a no deal brexit, or at least they will issue an ultimatum threatening to do this and demand an extension to A50 and a second referendum as the price of not doing it. At which point either TM will cave in a hold that referendum, or the government will collapse and we'll have the strangest general election in living memory.