Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Brexit: and bad pay

The issues of Brexit and bad pay are inextricably linked:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the hospitality industry >>> migrant labour and low-wages

Whilst EU citizens are applying in much fewer numbers for jobs in low-paid industries
Futures Forum: Brexit: and encouraging greater flows of migrants of working age into the country

... the resulting 'soaring' 'new wave of job opportunities' is not going to be filled by young Brits:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and migrant workers not wanting to work on West Country farms

Migrants are already leaving - and there's nobody to take their positions:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the day the immigrants left
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Neets

The Express has this story from earlier in the week:

Job vacancies for Britons soar as Brexit moves closer, says hotel owner


BREXIT is set to create a new wave of job opportunities for Britons, according to a London hotel owner.


By JOE BARNES Thu, Aug 10, 2017 


The European Union divorce will create more jobs in the UK for Britons as EU citizens choose to not apply for roles in the country. A new study has said more vacancies will become available to British workers with some EU nationals choosing to leave the UK because of Brexit.


Discussing the impact of Brexit on the hotel industry, Ms von der Heyde told CNN: “Already we have seen a change as far as it has become more difficult to recruit. Whereas before we would place an advert and we would have 50 applicants, we now get 10. To get the kind of person that fits here, we are having to look longer and harder.”

The hotelier did, however, suggest the appetite for Britons to take up certain roles in the hotel industry was questionable.
Ms von der Heyde claimed “British kids are not interested in housekeeping”, but would rather focus on applying for the more “glamorous areas” within the service industry.

Jobs: Brexit sends job vacancies for Britons soaring | UK | News | Express.co.uk


As John Harris writing in the Guardian recently suggested, we need a more 'balanced economy':

Brexit won't punish bankers. But it will harm voters.

With a balanced economy we could relax when financiers shut up shop. As it is, we need their taxes.

John Harris | Last modified on Monday 21 August 2017

The reasons why 17.4 million British people trooped to the polling stations last summer and put their crosses in the leave box have been endlessly analysed, and often crudely carved in half – as if some Brexit supporters were angry about immigration and others fixated on questions of sovereignty, and that was pretty much that.


But 10 years after the French bank BNP Paribas heralded the coming financial crisis by suspending two hedge funds that had effectively proved worthless, it’s worth reprising a pretty basic point: among the furies that exploded on 23 June last year were lingering grievances about the financial crash of 2007-8. The years since the cashpoints almost ran out had seen simmering anger about the endless billions pumped into the big banks and the lack of any obvious reckoning – not to mention exasperation with politicians chained to the demands of high finance, and not nearly interested enough in the millions of people whose only acquaintance with the City lay in the mess it had made.

To the delight of Irish estate agents, tailors and wine merchants, more than a dozen banks will shift business to Dublin

Clearly, the vote for Brexit represented a kind of misdirected, flailing revenge. As big banks lined up with the UK’s largest corporations to warn the public that Brexit would be disastrous, the sense of an instantaneous backlash was obvious. Former City insider Nigel Farage well knew Brexit’s basic populist plotlines, and when he made his victory speech in the small hours of 24 June, he said that the leave campaign had knocked down three adversaries in particular: “multinationals”, “big politics”, and “merchant banks”.

Having got up off the floor, some of the City of London’s biggest players are now taking big decisions. They have contracts that extend way beyond 2019, but what Brexit negotiations might mean for them remains chronically unclear. Plans for their future European operations need to be made right now. So plenty of banks are starting to shift parts of their business outside London, to a surprisingly muted response. Philip Hammond, the chancellor, seems to know roughly what is at stake, but swaths of the Conservative party – that historic redoubt of traders, brokers and high-rollers – seem surprisingly unconcerned. After all, what have bankers – bankers – ever done for us? Part of the answer lies in the £70bn-ish of tax revenue paid by financial services in 2015/16 – about two-thirds of our annual spend on the NHS...

This may be the first column I have ever written in defence of banks. If we had any kind of solid, dependable, balanced economy, we all might be much more relaxed. But there are no signs of that; indeed, leaving the EU looks likely to make the gaping inequalities the City symbolises even worse. The next time you are in a hospital or school, you might want to consider two things: that bankers foot a sizable share of the costs; and that, in the midst of Brexit’s mixture of anger, delusion and indifference, they may soon be paying their taxes somewhere else.

For the first time ever I am defending banks. Here’s why | John Harris | Opinion | The Guardian

Or as the New European would have it, we have forgotten and marginalised those who have been 'left behind':

Brexit was born at the battle of Orgreave

14 August 2017 Julia Muir



The working class were the key to Brexit. They must be the key to its defeat.







62% of EU referendum voters in South Yorkshire opted to Leave. It would have been higher, if not for the moderating effect of the pro-Remain Sheffield Hallam constituency (home to the largest population of professionals outside London) on Sheffield’s 51% Leave result.

Buried deep inside the gut of the South Yorkshire Leaver is a firm belief that Brexit is right for them, bringing much- needed change, because life inside the EU is bleak...


To fully understand the events of June 2016, we must rewind 32 years to the events of June 1984, when striking miners were pitched against police officers in bloody battles at collieries, epitomised by the infamous Battle of Orgreave. When television cameras started rolling, the roughest, toughest men of the county were pitched into fists vs truncheon combat with the establishment. The unfolding scenes of crowds of miners being charged at by police on horseback are burned into the collective memory of the region, and have come to symbolise a merciless and violent crushing of dissent in the North by Westminster. As a result, South Yorkshire police became “untouchable”. (Only now is the legacy of this being revealed via the inquiries into Hillsborough and the Rotherham child abuse scandal.)

The striking miners were fighting the closure of a dying industry. They lost the fight. The pits followed the fate of the steel factories and closed. The employment for thousands disappeared, never to be replaced, some believe as a punishment for such resistance against the establishment. Thriving village mining communities became isolated pockets of poverty; poor health, poor transport connections, and poorly educated. The impact of the loss of expenditure in the local economy was devastating. The drug dealers moved in, and the first generation of never-to-be employed youngsters were born...

The Rotherham child abuse inquiries of 2014 and 2015 brought to our attention what communities already knew. Child-grooming gangs of men of Pakistani heritage had been abusing vulnerable white girls from deprived communities and the authorities had been turning a blind eye. Families in areas of social deprivation had no voice, and the classification of these girls as wanton rather than preyed upon was symbolic of the disdain shown to these neighbourhoods. Fear of the “Muslim rapist or ISIS terrorist” predator became palpable, exacerbated by front pages of the pro Brexit press, which could have gone largely unnoticed had they not been amplified by the coverage given to them by the BBC through broadcast and social media channels. UKIP found a home.

Anti immigration sentiment was not about degree-educated French waitresses or Italian baristas (they tend not to venture up here) but about a perceived threat to safety from local Muslims and leaky EU borders leading to more arriving some time soon. When the rumour spread that child groomers had started to turn their attention to the emotionally vulnerable teenagers of the wealthier leafier suburbs, the Tory Brexit vote was mobilised into action. The impact of this was most spectacular in June 2017 with the withdrawal of the “block out Labour” vote they had previously lent to the pro-EU Clegg, (who had remained popular locally), ironically leading to the loss of his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour. Perhaps liberalism is a luxury that is really only truly affordable when not feeling under threat.


The strategy has been to communicate different and contradictory messages to each echo-chamber; a pro single market theme for the commentariat through the intellectual brand of Sir Keir Starmer, but a “jobs first Brexit” at the rallies by the man-of-the-people brand of “Jeremy”. Corbyn has visited the students and the dormant voters, and used the spoken word where literacy levels are pitifully low. They have heard it from the horse’s mouth, not through the filter and mansplaining of the broadcast media. Whether or not he fails, they believe he will try to help them.

The Remainers believe that to win their vote, Labour will go into reverse gear on Brexit. I would not be so sure. Perhaps “Jeremy” is more likely to stand by the precariat than the commentariat; those who see him as their potential saviour, not those who will scrutinise his ideology.

Those who have enjoyed the benefits the EU brings most clearly and who perhaps will first feel the detrimental economic and lifestyle impact of leaving the EU the most, are faced with one simple but monumental challenge – to make sure the Labour Brexit voter will win by remaining in the EU. They must commit to extend the improved quality of life and employment that comes to many of us from being within the EU, to those who up until now have not experienced it.

To stop Brexit, the Brexiteers have to lose, and the working class Brexit voters have to be the winners in a future within the EU. To start, the appeal of following the Brexiteers must be diminished, and another way shown. This will not be by pointing out ‘Leave Lies’ but by demonstrating that Brexiteers are doing precisely what they promised not to do. Clegg paid dearly amongst his student and academic supporters not for failing to do something. But in agreeing to raise tuition fees he did something he promised he would not. We are used to dreams and aspirations not being fulfilled, we are accustomed to trying but failing. But reneging on a promise not to do something is very different.

Brexiteers promised not to let immigrants into the country. They promised not to inflict long term damage on the economy when leaving the single market. As negotiations begin, it is clear these promises will have to be broken.

This needs to be communicated not as a “we told you so – we must keep the status quo”, but a new action-oriented proposition should be presented: Let’s Exit from Brexit because there’s a better way to get the life you need. We heard your voice. You win. We will take action. Now let’s vote for that.

The power to do this really lies only in the hands of the Labour party. Perhaps with this scenario the Labour party, in collaboration with the Lib Dems and SNP, could truly achieve what is best for all of its supporters and keep this country where it belongs; as an invigorated and tougher, stronger reforming force within the EU, that makes sure that in the future no one is left behind.

Julia Muir is a veteran of the European automotive industry, founder of the UK Automotive 30% Club, and Sheffield-based Gaia Innovation Ltd, a social enterprise company that builds relationships between employers, schools and universities


Brexit was born at the battle of Orgreave - Top Stories - The New European
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