Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[AngryOfTuebrook]

38 minutes ago, Moctezuma said:

Thanks for the effort put in, this is a useful summation, it sounds like a lot of this stuff is in the aggregate* i.e. that the effects will be a long term degradation of British services and different sectors of the economy until it can be reoriented to new areas of growth. That's why I asked whether people would see it manifest in their day to day lives in the immediate future, as I'm starting to think that the core of the Brexit vote (i.e. English retirees who live in the South and midlands) won't feel much of an effect until they hit care homes.

I think this is why I have no faith in any sort of "Brexit backlash" turfing the Tories out. The negative impacts are so diverse and diffuse that a lot of people - least of all those who voted for Brexit - won't fully acknowledge the line of cause and effect.

[Rushies tash]

4 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I think this is why I have no faith in any sort of "Brexit backlash" turfing the Tories out. The negative impacts are so diverse and diffuse that a lot of people - least of all those who voted for Brexit - won't fully acknowledge the line of cause and effect.

I think it's simpler than that - they'll just refuse to admit they were wrong, regardless of the evidence put before them. The kind of people who go into schools on the bounce because their child got a detention for smacking someone. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[Gnasher]

18 hours ago, Rushies tash said:

I think it's simpler than that - they'll just refuse to admit they were wrong, regardless of the evidence put before them. The kind of people who go into schools on the bounce because their child got a detention for smacking someone. 

Let's have a quick look at some of this "evidence put before us" 

 

" the ONS said wage growth was between 3.9 to 5.1 for the year excluding distortions caused by the pandemic"

 

For those of us who have lived through periods of low wage, high unemployment, low growth, economic times these figures are hardly disastrous.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-hiring-surged-june-economy-reopened-ons-2021-07-15/

 

 

[skend04]

32 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Let's have a quick look at some of this "evidence put before us" 

 

" the ONS said wage growth was between 3.9 to 5.1 for the year excluding distortions caused by the pandemic"

 

For those of us who have lived through periods of low wage, high unemployment, low growth, economic times these figures are hardly disastrous.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-hiring-surged-june-economy-reopened-ons-2021-07-15/

 

 

What's this got to do with Brexit?

[Gnasher]

31 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Let's have a quick look at some of this "evidence put before us" 

 

" the ONS said wage growth was between 3.9 to 5.1 for the year excluding distortions caused by the pandemic"

 

For those of us who have lived through periods of low wage, high unemployment, low growth, economic times these figures are hardly disastrous.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-hiring-surged-june-economy-reopened-ons-2021-07-15/

 

 

Here how bad things are going for the millions in construction and hospitality, 

 

https://ukinvestormagazine.co.uk/construction-and-hospitality-workers-to-receive-pay-rises-amid-labour-shortages/

[Gnasher]

1 minute ago, skend04 said:

What's this got to do with Brexit?

I'd have thought the economy in general would be impacted one way or another by Brexit, and the economy is hardly on its legs, all the data tells us so. 

[Gnasher]

Inflation linked to wage growth,

 

https://www.ft.com/content/53f4055e-493b-4487-9c44-9ab5e7de10f5

[Rushies tash]

49 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Let's have a quick look at some of this "evidence put before us" 

 

" the ONS said wage growth was between 3.9 to 5.1 for the year excluding distortions caused by the pandemic"

 

For those of us who have lived through periods of low wage, high unemployment, low growth, economic times these figures are hardly disastrous.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-hiring-surged-june-economy-reopened-ons-2021-07-15/

 

 

I was referring to empty shelves, but thanks.

[Gnasher]

7 minutes ago, Rushies tash said:

I was referring to empty shelves, but thanks.

Oh sorry. If you want a balanced informed opinion on food manufacturing and labour shortages I'd suggest you read Sarah O'Conners articles on the matter. She's a remainer but knows the subject inside out and always writes objectively. Unfortunately a lot of her articles are behind a paywall but she does put the articles out to the public after a week or so

 

 

[Gnasher]

More bad news,

 

 

[Gnasher]

On 26/08/2021 at 08:11, deiseach said:

Back in my youth in the 80's and 90's, a lot of it would have been done by teenagers on their summer holidays. The problem agriculture faces is that the value of its output, and therefore the price that can be earned on it, has not kept pace with earnings in other parts of the economy. There's an article on the Bank of England's website which illustrates the point. Since 1990, the price of a pint of milk has doubled. The price of a football ticket has gone up eightfold. That's an extreme example, but it's one to which lots of people can relate. Applying that to the teenager working in the fields, they could have paid for their football ticket through the winter with what they earned. These days, there's no chance of that. It's not laziness that holds them back from working, it's them being a rational economic agent. So what are those engaged in agriculture to do? For the last few decades, they've been bringing in labour from the modern day equivalent of those teenagers: workers from eastern Europe with no children who are content to work 12-hour days and live twenty to a house with their fellow countrymen/women for a few months because they know the sterling earned will translate into a tidy pile of zlotys back home. Now that they are gone, I look forward to Brexiteers and their fellow travellers on the left, for whom the latté-sipping metropolitan elites are the real enemy, entertaining eightfold increases in the price of fruit and vegetables to bring their value into line with those of football tickets.

A lot of truth in the first part of that post however its difficult to ignore when discussing agriculture the huge disparity between larger farms and smaller farms and the ginormous cap between the rich land owners and the pittance paid to those picking our fruit and veg. Inequality I might add aided and abetted by the European Union, or do we just look the other way when it concerns the below?

 

 

https://theconversation.com/eu-subsidies-benefit-big-farms-while-underfunding-greener-and-poorer-plots-new-research-144880

[deiseach]

A quick Google will tell you that "Average hourly earnings [in Ireland] increased by 8.6% between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, rising from €24.76 to €26.89. ... Average weekly earnings increased by 4.9% across the public sector and by 8.7% across the private sector in the year to Q1 2021". Quite the Remain dividend there.

 

(It's not that simple, of course. It never is. But if anyone is going to link wage growth to Brexit, they'll have to do better than posting the headline from a Google search.)

[Bruce Spanner]

2 minutes ago, deiseach said:

A quick Google will tell you that "Average hourly earnings [in Ireland] increased by 8.6% between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, rising from €24.76 to €26.89. ... Average weekly earnings increased by 4.9% across the public sector and by 8.7% across the private sector in the year to Q1 2021". Quite the Remain dividend there.

 

(It's not that simple, of course. It never is. But if anyone is going to link wage growth to Brexit, they'll have to do better than posting the headline from a Google search.)

 

Spain saw an 16/18%  increase in wage infalation and Romania a 24% increase.

 

If anything our increases are feeble in comparison, but that doesn't fit the straw clutching arguments being made.

[skend04]

10 minutes ago, deiseach said:

A quick Google will tell you that "Average hourly earnings [in Ireland] increased by 8.6% between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, rising from €24.76 to €26.89. ... Average weekly earnings increased by 4.9% across the public sector and by 8.7% across the private sector in the year to Q1 2021". Quite the Remain dividend there.

 

(It's not that simple, of course. It never is. But if anyone is going to link wage growth to Brexit, they'll have to do better than posting the headline from a Google search.)

A Google for the ONS data would have suggested that the economy has lost a lot of part time jobs and lower paying jobs so it's inevitable that the average wage will rise as you don't have to add lower wage figure into the total. But Gnasher isn't going to delve that deep into stuff. There are a number of reasons for it, leaving the EU is lower down the list.

[Gnasher]

16 minutes ago, deiseach said:

A quick Google will tell you that "Average hourly earnings [in Ireland] increased by 8.6% between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, rising from €24.76 to €26.89. ... Average weekly earnings increased by 4.9% across the public sector and by 8.7% across the private sector in the year to Q1 2021". Quite the Remain dividend there.

 

(It's not that simple, of course. It never is. But if anyone is going to link wage growth to Brexit, they'll have to do better than posting the headline from a Google search.)

Youre right its certainly not as simple as that, however the fact that certain British occupations are witnessing wage rises because of shortages in labour is that simple, and its happening on almost every building site in Britain, its down every street, no need to search Google. The comparison to other countries are as complex as they are irrelevant.

 

If we're in the silly game of pitting one country against another, here's our growth forcasts:  more bad Brexit news;

 

https://www.export.org.uk/news/559665/IMF-predicts-the-UK-is-on-course-for-faster-growth-than-the-United-States-and-the-EU.htm

[deiseach]

Some more Google-fu. Agriculture accounts for 1% of employment in the UK. It accounts for 2.5% of employment in France. Same Common Agricultural Policy, different outcomes. It's almost as if individual countries can pursue different strategies within that common framework. And yes, once again, it's not that simple. But actually knowing stuff beyond the headlines opens you to abuse from certain quarters, so it's easier to keep it simple.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

3 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Youre right its certainly not as simple as that, however the fact that certain British occupations are witnessing wage rises because of shortages in labour is that simple, and its happening on almost every building site in Britain, its down every street, no need to search Google. The comparison to other countries are as complex as they are irrelevant.

1. What are the causes of the current sector-specific shortages of labour? 

2. What  are likely to be the longer-term ways businesses and Government will address these shortages?

 

I'm still waiting for any half decent argument that the current payrises are a step-change rather than a blip.

[Gnasher]

2 minutes ago, deiseach said:

Some more Google-fu. Agriculture accounts for 1% of employment in the UK. It accounts for 2.5% of employment in France. Same Common Agricultural Policy, different outcomes. It's almost as if individual countries can pursue different strategies within that common framework. And yes, once again, it's not that simple. But actually knowing stuff beyond the headlines opens you to abuse from certain quarters, so it's easier to keep it simple.

Not sure what point you're making there on agriculture D, not sure about your quip on abuse either tbh.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

18 minutes ago, deiseach said:

A quick Google will tell you that "Average hourly earnings [in Ireland] increased by 8.6% between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, rising from €24.76 to €26.89. ... Average weekly earnings increased by 4.9% across the public sector and by 8.7% across the private sector in the year to Q1 2021". Quite the Remain dividend there.

And what are the UK's "Covid heroes" in the NHS and all the other vital public services being offered?  Real-term pay cuts.

 

The Government's justification for this will be that times are hard and we've got to tighten our belts and live within our means, yadda yadda yadda. What they won't say is that part of the reason the country's not as flush as it could be is that they hobbled it with this Brexit shitwittery.

[Gnasher]

2 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

1. What are the causes of the current sector-specific shortages of labour? 

2. What  are likely to be the longer-term ways businesses and Government will address these shortages?

 

I'm still waiting for any half decent argument that the current payrises are a step-change rather than a blip.

I. Most believe it's a mixture of Covid/Brexit  what percentage is impossible to gauge with accuracy although a 60/40 split seems a fair ballpark figure.

 

2. This is where Labour should be aiming it's tanks, instead of blaming Brexit in general the party should imo be siding with workers and calling out owners of poultry factory's etc, many of whom are turning over vast profits year on year, I refer to the Jon Thickett tweet a few pages back of solving the problem by paying more wages.

 

Who knows how long the wage rises will last, not going to look a gift horse in the mouth though and turn them down.

[Gnasher]

1 minute ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

And what are the UK's "Covid heroes" in the NHS and all the other vital public services being offered?  Real-term pay cuts.

 

The Government's justification for this will be that times are hard and we've got to tighten our belts and live within our means, yadda yadda yadda. What they won't say is that part of the reason the country's not as flush as it could be is that they hobbled it with this Brexit shitwittery.

Agree, yeah terrible pay rises for NHS etc. Disgusting, with inflation it's effectively a pay cut.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Gnasher said:

I. Most believe it's a mixture of Covid/Brexit  what percentage is impossible to gauge with accuracy although a 60/40 split seems a fair ballpark figure.

 

2. This is where Labour should be aiming it's tanks, instead of blaming Brexit in general the party should imo be siding with workers and calling out owners of poultry factory's etc, many of whom are turning over vast profits year on year, I refer to the Jon Thickett tweet a few pages back of solving the problem by paying more wages.

 

Who knows how long the wage rises will last, not going to look a gift horse in the mouth though and turn them down.

Literally nobody is talking about turning down payrises.

 

The trouble with your argument is that every time anyone mentions the lasting economic damage caused by Brexit - damage which will hit the lower-paid hardest - you deflect and start talking about these temporary, sector-specific, Covid-related pay rises. You're avoiding the more important points.

[Gnasher]

8 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Literally nobody is talking about turning down payrises.

 

The trouble with your argument is that every time anyone mentions the lasting economic damage caused by Brexit - damage which will hit the lower-paid hardest - you deflect and start talking about these temporary, sector-specific, Covid-related pay rises. You're avoiding the more important points.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this consistent 'are these pay rises temporary' line of reasoning, is any wage rise cast in stone? It just seems a rather odd line to take. It's obviously a lot harder to take a pay rise back than it is to give it in the first place so rises are undoubtedly a massive yes, especially for the low waged, hence my query of your negativity.

 

As for the second part of your post on the greater overall bleak outlook I'm guessing your talking about the R Beear article Spanner shared from the guardian article, if not I apologise but if so I thought his peice was a load of words saying very little of note and with scant data to back his reasoning. In short  he admitted Brexit hasn't been as bad as he first feared (and he predicted the disaster)but will get worse as time goes on. Well the data on growth, unemployment and wages tell a different tale.

 

A lot of these workers in hospitality, construction, haulage, agricultural enjoying wage rises through labour shortages have not received a substantial wage increase for a decade or so due to an over inflated labour pool and economic stagnation.

[Tj hooker]

On 27/08/2021 at 07:46, Chairman Meow said:

 

Were there not licence changes around vans at some point?

 

I know after I had my licence they changed the rules around some of the bigger stuff and using trailers. But I am sure I remember someone going on about them introducing van tests or something? I have no idea if that was a thing, a potential thing that someone moaned about to me or if I maybe even dreamt it. 

 

 

Lwb Van's are no longer included on an ordinary licence I think the change happened a few years ago I can't say with any certainty if Swb Van's are though .

I've driven Van's for 35 years and the firm I work for are advertising on our Van's for drivers I've never known that , now the company I work for are an absolute fucking shower who pile the work on and couldn't give a shite if we do 5 or 10 hours extra every week without any form of overtime as our Van's are not run on a tachograph .