Chapter Two Crime and Immigration (Bogey People)

©GeraldineBanksJuly2024

So here we are Crime and Immigration, they go together don’t they? Well if your a News Editor who needs to increase your readership (digital or otherwise), Crime certainly pays. Our assets by their nature are important to us and ownership is part of our culture. Anyone who wants to take them from us is dangerous and thus front page news.

It’s a difficult one when there is total confusion over who owns what. Take for example The Elgin Marbles they are definitely Greek , and are known by the Greeks as the Parthenon Sculptures( because they were found in Parthenon). Some are housed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and some of the Sculptures are housed at The British Museum in London.

In the 19th Century Lord Elgin acquired part of the Parthenon Sculptures from the Ottoman Empire( Turkey rather than Greece). His actions were thoroughly investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal. (Good Ol’ Parliamentarians!) .The Greek Government would however like them back and feel of course that they are part of Greek History. What indeed is ownership, why do we need the Elgin Marbles, and was the decision in 1816 fair?

Need is the connection, we’ll argue tooth and nail for a lump of Marble, but when it comes to the need for a working population we will one minute say “yes” to immigration for jobs at home, in truth, that no one really wanted to do and when we feel we have enough workers and times have changed and we’d like those jobs back, we say “no” to immigration.

The Keynesian idea of “full employment” is intriguing , where there is no significant surplus of unemployed workers and therefore employers are unable to find additional workers to fill open positions. That is the definition of “full employment” and that is when the workers, heaven forbid can ask for higher wages.

The Confederation of British Industry have always rattled on about the “lack of a skilled workforce”, but were never very specific about the skills this workforce needed. Keynes was talking a long time ago, and probably using a hammer was a useful skill, now being able to understand stock systems and operate a keyboard and understand the finer points of data protection are necessary skills even to work in a supermarket .

Keynes theories are out of date now, he wouldn’t understand that a worker may choose to work part- time in order to have a better quality of life and he would be astounded by the level of education that most workers have and are expected to use. He would most definitely understand that rather than employing more people a firm would rather pay overtime to existing workers just to keep headcount down. In his view , full employment was a reality. ( possibly due to losing so many people of working age during the War).Honestly I hope we never go back to that.

Emotive terms such as “Stop the Boats” and putting illegal immigrants in “Prison Barges” has nothing to do with the need for labour or availability of jobs. The proportion of people who are trying to enter this Country illegally is not large and although there is an element of economic migration, the reality is that to choose to make such a journey , with the inherent dangers and risks involved is not for the faint hearted. Our humanity should reach out and say, “that could be me one day”. Those people must be desperate. Instead we use terms like “invasion” and assume that they are just making use of our wonderful benefits system. (more of that later)

Either we had a wish to enforce our Borders or we didn’t. Reality is Customs, Border Control or whatever it’s called is now hopelessly under resourced. That is a deliberate policy decision based on Economic Risk Management by Governments over the last 30 years or so.

Staff our Borders .Should we ? Shouldn’t we?

The balance between spending the money to protect our Borders or leaving our Borders to fend for themselves has been made. The latter won the day and now it is much easier to cover the tracks of neglect by saying we’ll send the unfortunates to Rwanda. It makes a good headline, so the Politicians of the Day and the Media are happy.

The above diagram shows the four elements that were part of the Risk Assessment. Conversation ( a lot of hot air in Parliamentary Committees), Money ( There’s never enough) Time( no one pays much attention to this) and finally Mistakes( obviously have detrimental effects on risk)

The Real Issue then of labour and work is not illegal immigrants stealing our jobs or our benefits packages. Indeed, now that pseudo Australian Immigration rules have been introduced to the UK , where you need to earn a certain salary to take a job in this Country. Even the elite immigrants with qualifications, money and talent aren’t stealing our jobs, because they presumably are the only ones able to do whatever they are employed to do. We just don’t have a person of that caliber at that time. Shame eh? So bring them in from abroad. Just like we use to complain about the exodus of our trained Health Professionals to places like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Quid Pro Quo, I suppose.

Currently, there just isn’t enough of the lower level jobs available for those who see themselves not as an “intellectual elite” and who in truth would never want to be. We cannot fill our Universities with people who really want to be out experiencing life, even if it is on a building site carting bricks or working in a Warehouse, or indeed policing our Borders.

A lot of young people have high expectations, brought up in a high tech world where they had access to everything their parents could afford. They don’t want 4/5ths of their income going on Rent, Heating and Food, with nothing to spend for leisure or indeed a car loan. Never mind saving for their retirement. Most jobs they will start in will hardly pay for the rent. Where is the appeal in that. They want the life their parents had.

The Real Crime; if there is, one is not the Bogey people who come over here to steal our jobs and property. The tragedy is that there have been many opportunities and enough evidence over the years to have put an economic infrastructure in place to provide for everyone’s needs and aspirations to earn a living.

The” intellectual elite” in the Media and Politics will demonise working people because it suits them, they are after all an elite and want to maintain their position. They have failed in their responsibility to use their perceived intellectual superiority to make things better and funnily now only seem to wash their hands of the whole process and use their investment funds to retire to a warm, romantic peasant lifestyle in rural Europe and make an appearance on T.V. to tell people about it.A.K.A ” A Place in The Sun”