Labour's creation of a British underclass and Chris Bryant's inability to take responsibility

[moondog]

Great comment

It's from the Telegraph so it's obviously right-wing rubbish. Labour are wonderful, the Guardian said so.

migrant workers are often painted as living 6 people in a one bed flat, working at cut rate wages and leaving after a few months

it would be interesting to know how many poles have stayed- my kids go to school with many polish children who were either born here, or moved as babies/toddlers.

i would be interested to know what proportion of the total migrant worker workforce each cohort comprises. i don't suppose anyone knows though.

This is a subject close to my heart since my new wife is from one of the Eastern European countries mentioned.

If you speak to her about 'those bloody immigrants coming to steal our jobs' then you'd probably get a swift punch on the nose.

Those 'bloody immigrants' come to seek a better life and a better future. Crucially though they are willing to work from the ground up and work hard as they've been brought up in countries with little welfare and a strong work ethic.

My wife and her sister all arrived here with nothing. They worked in factories doing graveyard shifts packing boxes. Their cousin is a highly qualified aircraft engineer who also moved over after being laid off. He started out working night shift at Morrisons warehouse.

All have moved onto better things thanks to being given a chance and their hard work. Conversely they see the typical British attitude of welfare dependancy and they simply can't understand it.

Those 'closed shops' mentioned in the article probably come about because it's unlikely a British youngster would last more than a week washing cars for 10 hours a day. He/she would feel they are better than that. We've brought up a generation of kids who think the world owes them a living. A lot of British employers now will favour Eastern European workers because in general they will work hard and cause less problems than their British counterpart.

Is it right? Is it wrong? Well it doesn't matter. It just is. As an employer you only really care about if the employee can/will do a good job. Their nationality? I don't think many care.

Congratulations on your marriage Niceguy.
I agree and having lived in Eastern Europe for a while, I have seen at first hand the laughably tragic chasm between what many youngsters in those countries can do compared to our own over indulged lot.

What is the solution? How do we give our kids a work ethic?

well, this little migrant is organising herself to go back home. i am looking forward to not being responsible for having wrecked a country with my stakhanovite work ethic/acceptance of low wages/benefit scrounging/swan eating etc etc

Different perspective...
www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/europe/germany-fights-population-drop.html?hp&_r=0

Germany didn't allow Poland and other new EU countries to work legally in 2004. And now they are struggling with low birth rates whilst the UK has one of the highest population growth in EU.

Surely we need low birth rates in order to prepare for oil and other natural resources running out? Not to mention the lack of unskilled jobs.

Tabitha, quick google will show you that low fertility rates are bad news for countries. Especially in the West when people live much longer than before.

China seem to be doing OK with their one child policy.

For now they are. But they are facing tough times with an aging population depending on a much smaller cohort of working age people to support them.

China are apparently abolishing the One-Child Policy.

Ive recently taken on 2 polish members of staff (healthcare assistants in NHS). They are both early 20's and did their NVQ level 3 in previous jobs (in private care homes). I have never, in any job came across anyone yet who works as hard as these two do.
They are compassionate, caring and hard, hard workers. They would work 13 hours a day every day if they could.

I really dont know how we instil a similar work ethic/desire to work in our own - I know that my own son moans about having to a 40 min paper-round once a week and this frustrates the life out of me.

So when immigrant workers operate a closed shop keeping out British workers, that's somehow the fault of the people being excluded? Right... And when Mr Wealthy Telegraph journalist prefers to employ immigrant builders who he admits are undercutting local workers because they don't have families to support at British costs, that's somehow the fault of the last Labour government? Bizarre logic there, niceguy.

Congratulations on your wedding, though. Hope you and Mrsniceguy will be very happy together.

My point is that employers want people who will work hard. And right now the perception (rightly or wrongly) is that immigrants will work harder, longer and cause you less stress.

It's not bizarre logic at all. It's just an unfortunate truth that the youth of today have got a reputation for being lazy, entitled and uneducated. Case in point is my own daughter. A while back I offered to pay her wash my car. £5. She scoffed at the idea and refused to do it. But I can take my car up the road and have it cleaned professionally for the same price by a team of polish guys.

Now who is doing the wrong thing? The polish guys who are working come rain or sun washing cars for 10 hours a day? Or my own lazy arsed daughter who turned down a fiver for 15 minutes work and feels she's better than that?

When I worked in a Russian university, the head of my department laughed in my face when I asked her about extra curricular activities for students. She told me they were there to work, not relax and if they weren't working, they should be sleeping.

Compare and contrast...
Again I supervise appreciable numbers of p/g students and the endemic inability to take responsibility for even the simplest things shocks me. These are supposedly the crème de la crème.
I also work with scores of much less educated young people and again.....

I think you sum it up Niceguy.
This inflated (and unfounded) sense of self worth a lot of people in this country have.
(No offence. Obv.)

Niceguy, I don't think you can judge everyone by your daughter's standards.

How do you think she's ended up with such an attitude? I don't mean that aggressively, just what do you think has contributed to it?

i'm not judging 'everyone'. What I'm saying is that unfortunately a lot of youngsters nowadays are just like that.

Where they get it from? I guess it's because life is too comfortable nowadays when compared to our eastern european counterparts and beyond.

It's the norm abroad that you work for a living and nobody expects the government to pay for you to live if you don't. If the boss says you stay, you stay. And you consider yourself lucky you have a job! Cos if you don't want it, many others will. In India I saw people queueing up each day for a job at our offices. In Hong Kong it's the norm that you don't leave before the boss. It's just not the done thing.

The welfare state is by UK standards non-existent. In my wife's country child benefit is something like £10 per month. Unemployment benefit tapers off over a year to nothing. You simply cannot survive on handouts. Whereas in the UK many bemoan the fact benefits are not enough yet we seem to have millions who do live off it.

Kid's nowadays are fed a diet of celebrity bollocks where to be successful you don't work hard but get a pair of fake tits and marry a footballer. Their role models are Katie Price and not Alan Sugar.

Worse still the old traditional jobs we used to have as kids are no longer available. How many kids nowadays deliver newspapers? Wash up at local restaurant or collect glasses in a pub? All the red tape means employers don't bother with hiring kids. Back in our day I delivered a back breaking amount of newspapers then was given £3 in cash at the end of the week! I don't think there's even a newsagent in my village, let alone a paper round!

Like I say, i'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it is what it is. Thanks to globalisation our kids are not just competing with their school friends for jobs. They're not competing with the Polish who have come over. They're also competing with that Indian girl and that filipino guy who will work twice as hard for a third of the salary because they live in the Philippines.

I work in a cafe, employing 12 people 4 English, 1 Thai, 4 Polish, 1 Hungarian, 1 Canadian and 1 New Zealander. And honestly everyone works just as hard as each other.

I think it's very unfair the reputation that younger British people have for being lazy. Put them in one of those jobs and they will do it. But why hire a 18yr old Briton when you can hire a 25yr old immigrant of any nationality. You hire the older person because you know they'll be more sensible purely because there a little bit older. Unfortunately this means its very hard for young people who have not gone on to higher education to find a job. And if they did go university they quite often can't get these jobs because they are deemed over qualified. Again why hire that 21 to clear tables when you know that they will be looking for a job to match the qualification they have. So they don't get the job and everyone says how lazy they are.

Immigrants don't work any harder, quite often it's just cheaper. Which when your only planning to work here for 2-3years to make still more money then you would back home your willing to suffer because you know you'll have enough for a deposit on a house or some land. This isn't a option for British kids where in the world will they go where they will make more in a low skilled job then doing the same job in the UK? I can't think of any where because we are very lucky here.

Immigrants are very Important for the Uk to run properly and we need them. But unfortunately this presents a disadvantage to young British people. We are not a country of manufacturing any more. So the majority of jobs people had during the 40's - early 80's are not available any more the jobs traditionally taken by younger less qualified people.

I don't what on earth do about this but bashing the young is cruel. From the age of 10 the media tells them when do well in school its because the tests are easier and when they don't do well its because they're dumb. I think we often look back to when we were young and go we all worked very hard, rose coloured glasses. It's seemed that people from other countries wanting a better life in the UK is deemed as a positive but British young people wanting that same life is seen as entitlement!

Also niceguy2, I agree with most of what you've posted but it bugs me that you call your daughter lazy... Yet seem to have no interest in washing your own car.

Very long, very sorry.

"A while back I offered to pay her wash my car. £5. She scoffed at the idea and refused to do it. But I can take my car up the road and have it cleaned professionally for the same price by a team of polish guys."

Hold on, I think you have forgotten to say that your car is a stretch limo and it would take her well over 1 hour to clean it to your standards on her own. That works out as payment below the minimum wage. I'm not surprised she scoffed, she's no fool!

Although, at least as a good Tory, you offered to pay her. I fear some New Labour types would instead have called it an "internship", handed her the bucket and told her to get on with it without further ado and without payment, promising that it would look good on her CV!