to thank Emily Thornberry profusely

[longfingernails]

She has just shown how much Labour detest the aspirational working class, the swingiest of swing voters. Labour will be hit with this again and again and again; ever denial and denunciation will just bring Labour's true views to a wider audience. Fundamentally, it will only reinforce the undeniable fact that Miliband's centre of gravity is firmly ensconced in Islington.

She has made a Tory/UKIP coalition, perhaps the best possible electoral outcome, much more likely. Thank you Emily!

Too tired to type much, so just outline.

aermingers story is about workers travelling to UK, doing jobs here, at least paying tax and spending money here.

Missing huge chunk of story about jobs travelling out of UK, being done in other countries, paying no tax and spending no money here. Midrange admin and skilled manufacturing jobs in economy almost all disappeared overseas. Hug chunk of economy now "missing".

Hourglass economy likely for UK's future - top and bottom, no middle.

This being done by employers and companies. Not a Labour plot. Not even a Tory plot. Can't be reversed (unless bring in protectionism - which could be done but wd have massive knock-ons also impacting aermingers). Certainly can't be reversed by UKIP, regardless of nostalgia or flag-waving.

Unions invented precisely to cope with issues described by aermingers of oversupply of labour, regardless of source of labour. Weakening of unions has allowed wages to drop - employers pleased at this. Labour not uninvolved in this, but parties most against unions have had biggest impact. Odd to assume Labour plot to lower wages when Labour only party doing anything against low wages (NMW, Milliband finally making noises about zero hours, Ming Campbell having not done enough).

Much of what Labour has done I can't support, but know other parties at least as bad or worse. To kid oneself change in economy caused by Labour plot to impoverish workforce (!) is to be vulnerable to false promises by magic wand wavers.

Notice any similarities??

But maybe this is what lies behind the mask. We are living in frightening times .

Also aermingers your rant about MN is, IMHO, cobblers.

I've never seen a thread where people are saying children (without disabilities) shouldn't share a room. I've certainly seen posters who say "Well why did you get pregnant then", but it's never the lefties. Also a fair few posters who seem to see "workers" and "people on benefits" as separate groups.

(BTW, I'm a floating voter, not a Labour member.)

Unions could have a great role to play in trying to push back against "market wages" i.e 5 guys in a bedsit. Things like the CSCS, and other schemes could be amended/brought in to legitimately stifle immigration by making sure people have the correct level of language so they are not a hazard to themselves or others. Crack downs on zero hours for low paid jobs (they are fine for high paid consultants)

I am concerned that for years business have specifically scrapped/scaled back their training etc to create skills shortages and then lo and behold they have to recruit from other countries. Getting semi and skilled people doing jobs barely over the min wage is bad for UK plc.

Yes the current trends in the labour market are bad for the UK as a whole. It's unsurprising that our productivity is poor and not improving even while the government trumpets that we have more people in work than ever before.

I'm not going to vote for UKIP, I think their economic policies would be terrible. I think it's depressing that working class people are so desperate for someone to represent them over their concerns about immigration and the EU that they're going to vote for a party which otherwise has policies which would be catastrophic for them.

The problem isn't with jobs going overseas, we had very low levels of unemployment for a recession on the scale of the one we've just had. Increased unionisation wouldn't help if you still had people who were coming in prepared to do the job without joining a union and for less money.

Labour haven't done anything effective about either increasing unionisation or about low pay. The NMW is a poverty wage, saying that it does something about 'low wages' is nonsense. It simply draws a line in the level of poverty you are allowed to expose people to, it doesn't mean they're not in poverty.

And yes some people on threads will disagree, but the general ethos of Mumsnet follows the general left wing tendency to favour the poor on benefits but treat the working poor as undeserving and the author of their own problems. Yes some people disagree, but as an overall tendency that is what I've always seen on Mumsnet.

"The problem isn't with jobs going overseas"

There is a huge problem with jobs going overseas. And of disappearing from the middle by being deskilled. Here's the chairman of John Lewis on this just recently: John Lewis chairman: UK workforce needs a step change

I have seen some horrible and frankly dim comments on MN towards the working poor, but by the same people who make similar comments towards the currently non-working poor.

As for: "favour the poor on benefits but treat the working poor as undeserving" : the working poor ARE part of the poor on benefits!

That article with the John Lewis chairman. He's saying that people don't have skills. But the pro-immigration lobby has always been in favour of importing skills. We don't invest in education because companies can employ someone with the right skills who has been trained elsewhere with no qualifications.

That article actually says the UK is 'jobs rich, wages poor'. I think it rather undermines your argument Flatly rather than supporting it. It doesn't say anything about jobs going overseas. It says low skill jobs are being created, which will happen when you bring in a lot of low skilled people who will do work for very little money and you only train your population to a low level of skill.

No, he's saying the jobs don't require the skills.

"He said job creation figures for last year in the UK showed that:

2.3 million higher-skilled jobs were created last year in the UK
two million jobs were created "at the bottom"
1.2 million jobs were lost "from the middle"
Sir Charlie, who also chairs the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, was speaking at the Daily Telegraph's Festival of Business.

This dwindling of middle-ranking job opportunities - which can provide a stepping stone for people advancing their career, could limit social mobility "at a time when we need more of that, not less", he said.

He contrasted the picture in the UK with that in the US and Germany, where the proportion of jobs which can be performed with just primary school-level attainment is much lower, at 10% and 5% respectively."

And that particular article doesn't mention jobs going overseas, but overseas outsourcing is one of the big causes of loss of the middle.

We joke about overseas call centres for banks, but all who do you think used to do that banking admin work? It was done in the UK; now it isn't. Whole HR departments have been outsourced to the Philippines. The IT industry has off-shored so much it's going to face a management crunch in two decades' time, because it's no longer pushing enough people up from the bottom through all the aspects of the business to become managers with hands-on experience. And so on.

You can't have a thriving, diverse economy without having skilled people.

But you can have skilled people without having a thriving, diverse economy. The Philippines is a case in point. I haven't checked recently, but for decades they had teachers and engineers out there behind the ploughs, or working as maids in other countries, because there simply weren't the jobs to absorb all their trained people.

This is because there are many ingredients AS WELL AS skilled people required to create jobs. Employees don't create the jobs; it's the other way round.

This is all digressing somewhat. But I really don't know where someone is coming from when they claim the UK doesn't invest in education, and that this is a plot by the Labour "Education education education" Party to keep the workforce down.

(I don't agree with all the ways Labour went about it. But not with their underlying intent of ensuring a good education for all.)

Pausing I would argue the UK doesn't have a good model of investing in education and training to support a quality economy. There has been a lack of investment by firms in training, this has led to foreseeable skills shortages. Also too many low productivity businesses are propped up by stagnating/falling wages and government subsidy in the form of tax credits.

Tony Blair / Labour ideas on further education were narrow - University expansion. Maybe that's back to the issue of a political class drawn from London lawyers with little contact with other worlds?

Labour ideas were not limited to University expansion. Huge amounts were done at the Early Years and primary school stages - leading to the complaints of over-prescriptiveness and form filling.

I think it went OTT, myself, and has caused other problems. And I'm not sure whether the net effect has been right. But it certainly wasn't lack of interest or of trying.

Lack of investment by employers has been a complaint since I were a lass - under more governments than I like to remember. There's always been a fear by those who fork out for training that their staff will be then be poached by those who don't. Obviously apprenticeships, unionisation (or not) and professional qualifications interact with these concerns, so the balance shifts around as those change.

Also, didn't Labour bring in the modern apprenticeships? Think they predate the current govt, so must have been Labour.

And again, Blair's deputy Prime Minister was John Prescott, hardly a London lawyer. Ditto Frank Field (of former Low Pay Unit protecting workers' right) and many others.

Honestly, there are really shit things one can rightly lay at the door of the Labour govt (Iraq War, starting the NHS privatisation and welfare cuts that the Coalition have seized with such joy). But attempting to de-skill the workforce ain't one of 'em.

University expansion was actually a Major government policy (including the conversion of polytechnics into the new universities in 1992) - even the 50% having had some education at tertiary level target was around during the Major govt (and it always included higher level NVQS and workplace-based training, it was never 50% doing an actual degree even under Labour).

Pausing I was not trying to prove any point merely to point out why someone looking at workforce education and training may not really rate Tony Blair's "Education..." rhetoric. So I didn't mention school either!

Modern apprenticeships are not quite up there with Germany's system now are they!

By the way I am voting Labour, I just don't see the point in defending their uninspiring record in an area they claim the high ground in.

Pausing, we have tumbled down the ratings in international ranking educationally since 1997. Literacy and numeracy standards have dropped massively. Labour inherited a decent education system which they destroyed.

One of the arguments for immigration has always been 'They keep the NHS going' etc, etc. And I always think, well, why don't we just train British people to do the jobs? There's another thread on here with someone on a low income complaining that she can't afford to go to University, and it's true, it's incredibly hard to access education when you have financial constraints that limit you or your already working.

I used to work in education for an organisation which was designed to increase participation under Labour, it was all really wishy washy, they'd send out people to do talks and encourage people to go to University, but if they actually asked for proper concrete practical help to go to university it was all 'Um, no, we don't do that sort of thing, sorry'.

We DO train British people to do the jobs - and then don't sodding employ them!

One side there are cuts and recruitment freezes; on the other, poorer pay and working conditions which mean trained people LEAVE teaching and healthcare.

Eg recent (Coalition) increase in midwifery training because of increased birth rate:

"On live radio, Mr Clegg was accused by Susie, a midwifery student at King's College London, of deception.
"We know there's a chronic shortage of midwives in this country and your government keeps saying we're investing in 5,000 more student midwife places," she said. "But wouldn't you say it's true you're largely deceiving the public, the taxpayer and us student midwives because trusts don't have the money to employ us?"
... But he conceded that some NHS trusts did not have enough money to employ more midwives.

None of this fits with your narrative of deliberate de-skilling.

But I agree that immigrants who have had their education and expensive early years paid for elsewhere are very attractive in national economic terms. It's why the figures for immigrants' net contributions to the economy are so high.

This kinda puts benefits etc in perspective www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/11/04/the-personal-tax-statement-george-osborne-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

Has anyone here raised the recent case of David Mellor and his opinions ("keep a civil tongue in your head") on working class people? I wonder* if it will get the same amount of airtime as ET's tweet.

• don't wonder at all

Ah it seems the affable fool mask that Boris wears has slipped a bit today. I've never liked him much or been taken in by him.