The Year We Lived Stupidly: Tory minister on what Brexit means … via Pride’s Purge
(not satire – it’s the Tories!)
So we’ve finally found out what Tories mean when they say “Brexit means Brexit”.
Former banker, Tory minister and very very nearly Tory leader Andrea Leadsom has revealed that post-Brexit the Tories want British workers* to work as fruit pickers.
So Brexit means …
- … British workers living in tents.
- … wages as low as £6.70 an hour.
- … seasonal contracts only
- … bullying supervisors.
Glad we finally sorted that little mystery out then.
My Mazamet 
Much of British agriculture is heavily reliant upon imported, cheap, casual labour; but then is it a good thing to have young Polish and Latvian graduates picking cabbages in East Anglia, largely for the benefit of giant U.K. food retailers?
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On its face it seems wrong- but it’s part of a development cycle. As societies improve living standards for the people at the bottom, a new class is created. More people come in to take that spot at the bottom of the pyramid and that has a knock on effect in the countries where they’re from. That sort of immigration has kept whole countries and many a family afloat during difficult economic periods.
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1) you are also creating a semi-permanent class of native-born knuckleheads who make more money on welfare than they would doing manual labor, so they never develop the habits of work and delayed gratification that would help get them out the cycle of stupid.
2) If the rate of your constant influx of migrants exceeds the rate of their cultural assimilation, you are essentially balkanizing your nation.
Now, both these things are actually good for politicians, gives them more misery to exploit, more idiots to bamboozle, more hatreds to flame, more free unicorns to promise, etc.
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So which wave of immigration was it which balkanized America? The Chinese, the Irish, the Italians or the Puerto Ricans? Which of those groups didn’t, in the end, assimilate?
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The Irish the most, they split the Protestant consensus wide open.
Of course the original source of cheap labor, blacks, are still largely unassimilated.
The U.S. slowed immigration from the 20s to the 60s, and that gave a lot of groups time to assimilate.
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I take your point, Pink, and accept it has some validity. The problem is, living standards have not improved for the people at the bottom for around 30 years, given no increase in the hours they work. An independently living individual in the U.K., let alone a family, simply cannot be supported on “wages as low as £6.70 an hour”; so British workers aren’t interested in competing for those jobs – it doesn’t add up unless they were to work c.70 hrs. a week. And actually, the poor have had to do just that (in other marginally higher paid types of employment), and increase the amount of hours worked in order to make ends meet. [See video below.]
Accordingly, what happens is that they become beholden to state Social Security payments, and it’s the corporates that benefit as a result. [Yes, the vegetables are 10 or 20 pence a kilo less – big deal!] Somewhat similarly, the U.K. benefits system spends c.£9,300,000,000* on subsidising rents paid to private landlords. That’s yet more taxpayers money subsidising the private sector.
Median income for those aged 22 to 30 it is still 7% lower** than at the pre-crisis (2007–08) level. It is highly unusual to see no growth in working-age incomes over a seven-year period.
*Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/20/private-landlords-9bn-housing-benefit-taxpayers-national-housing-federation-report
** Source: https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8371
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D.P. – cultural assimilation isn’t purely a matter of time and natural processes, as you’ll appreciate. And on that, along with your point about politicians exploiting misery and flaming hatreds, there’s this (if you will):
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The word assimilation tends to be used in the context of racism. According to some if a Moroccan in France eats Harira he’s *failing* to assimilate.
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Exactly the point of Jarecki’s video clip.
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P.S. and it’s not just food retailers who benefit, it’s consumers as well 😉
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What’s happening, my last comment said ‘awaiting moderation’? Is this a policy change here?
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No policy change… it’s the automatic setting for comments with two or more links to go into moderation.
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I take your point, Pink, and accept it has some validity. The problem is, living standards have not improved for the people at the bottom for around 30 years, given no increase in the hours they work. An independently living individual in the U.K., let alone a family, simply cannot be supported on “wages as low as £6.70 an hour”; so British workers aren’t interested in competing for those jobs – it doesn’t add up unless they were to work c.70 hrs. a week. And actually, the poor have had to do just that (in other marginally higher paid types of employment), and increase the amount of hours worked in order to make ends meet. [See video below.]
Accordingly, what happens is that they become beholden to state Social Security payments, and it’s the corporates that benefit as a result. [Yes, the vegetables are 10 or 20 pence a kilo less – big deal!] Somewhat similarly, the U.K. benefits system spends c.£9,300,000,000* on subsidising rents paid to private landlords. That’s yet more taxpayers money subsidising the private sector.
Median income for those aged 22 to 30 it is still 7% lower** than at the pre-crisis (2007–08) level. It is highly unusual to see no growth in working-age incomes over a seven-year period.
*Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/20/private-landlords-9bn-housing-benefit-taxpayers-national-housing-federation-report
** Source: https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8371
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Well, we have different definitions of living standards. Globalization and technology have transformed life on this planet in the past 30 years. We are more comfortable, warmer, we eat better, we have better access to information and entertainment, and medicine. You can’t use an economic/financial measure alone because that doesn’t tell anywhere near the whole story.
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Agreed, quality of living is far more than being a material thing. Why is everyone on Prozac these days? 😉
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Too much free time 😉
But I don’t mean just buying things, I mean having access to a comfortable/pleasant life. Being able to have things that seem banal like clothing or shoes, to things that make life easier like dishwashers or super efficient wood burners.
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Super efficient wood burners lead to Prozac dependency?
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I agree with Pink about the whole “too much free time” being a cause of some mild mental problems.
I think some will probably find this a little controversial, but the fact is that people that are struggling to survive rarely have time to think about their inner state.
If you work the fields or at the factory 18 hours a day to feed your children, you don’t really have the time to think about how you’re feeling a little off today, or how anxious you get at loud noises (and you certainly have no opportunity to go to a doctor to ask for a pill to help you deal with loud noises).
Us wealthy westerners however have all the time in the world to think about every ache and complaint that’s part of everyday life. And unfortunately, some doctors are too quick to give medicines to make their patients happy.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a patient on Prozac though (called Fontex over here).
It’s of course also worth remembering that when it comes to serious mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression, it’s always been around throughout history. People killed themselves in earlier times as well. Mentally ill patients were often killed or locked away and treated horribly. Even now there’s still some stigma surrounding mental health, but it’s easier to go to the doctor now and get treatment without the danger of being lobotomised.
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