Always quite amusing to see these sort of leftie people like yourself on social media who preach such wholesome moral compasses and that we should be tolerant to everyone and tells us we shouldn't give into hate, yet love to call people morons and racists at the drop of a hat when they have opposing views to you. Pure hypocrites.

Just answer the question - even for you that can't be so difficult. How coherent your reply might be is another question.

That's ok then - your one anecdotal example of a 'tidal wave' of Polish electricians engulfing your own workplace, trumps the empirical evidence provided by the LSE; Britain really is sick of experts.



I didn't refer to any kind of moral compass - I provided factual evidence that the assertion about EU migration was false. Being a moron is entirely without race or creed, so I see no dichotomy at all in being both left leaning, whilst considering that people who believe things that clearly aren't true, are idiots.

Sal Paradise wrote:It does beg one question - why are wages not rising when employment is? Is this a consequence of less expensive labour being an option? It would seem not. Sorry about that.

Sal Paradise wrote:It does beg one question - why are wages not rising when employment is? Is this a consequence of less expensive labour being an option? It would seem not. Sorry about that.

Unfortunately you have misread my posting. It was immigrant builders I referred to. Luckily electricians at that time for various reasons weren't affected. The practice of Mike Ashley and other major companies advertising for cheap labour in east Europe was well documented on television. In fact Jeremy corbyn has promised to stop this practice should he gain power.
With respect to whatever any evidence the LSE produces I can only comment on my experiences . This as I posted previously was observing the undercutting of individual British building workers on a large scale.

Across the UK, nearly 12% of the 2.1 million construction workers come from abroad, mainly from the EU. There are 350,000 people who work in London’s construction sector, of which just over half are from the UK, while 27% are from the EU. London needs an extra 13,000 new workers each year until 2021 to plug the skills gap needed in London’s construction workforce. The vast majority of the building sector opposes Brexit, even those who traditionally support the Tories.

Interesting figures/stastics , I assume that your reference to majority of building sector opposition to brexit ,means the employers.
Quite understandable as they could lose a major source of cheap labour. Both the tories and labour have never really invested in major training programs for young people. Neither in construction or engineering disciplines. Obviously we are now suffering a skills shortage.

I don't know if that's the case or not, since I have no knowledge of either sector; but it does ring true.

Hopefully, Labour's plans to improve educational outcomes and make FE and re-training more accessible to many more people will go some way to addressing it; and I believe the new approach to Apprenticeships will bear fruit in the longer term - it certainly seems that way in the sector in which I do have expertise.

Don't come on here being all reasonable. Yes, construction in this country is dominated by a handful of major housebuilders on the housing side while the major capital schemes by probably less than 10 companies. The irony is none of them employ their own craftsmen. It is all sub-contracted out to labour who have little or no empathy with the client or the project. There has been, as you say, no apprenticeships for many years. One faint hint of optimism is that this is very gradually changing recently.

The Tories certainly did their best to ditch the concept of the apprenticeship in the 80s. Presumably because most of the industries where youngsters traditionally took apprenticeships were pretty much shut down.
My own personal opinion is that as a group, the young tend not to vote in the numbers of say pensioners.
So presumably that is why in the past 7 years the Tories have done away with EMA, trebled university tuition fees etc.. ie all policies that have been to the detriment of young ( potential) voters.
If you don't bother voting you suffer the consequences, sadly.