Chapter 7 Employment , useful or not?

So here’s the rub, what motivates people and is motivation dangerous when it’s used by others to achieve objectives that benefit the few and not the many. For example , encouraging students to study so hard for what . To compete with each other, when indeed what we should be trying to do is educate to improve things as a whole. What really is the difference in getting 80% in an exam and 85%. Both candidates are obviously very good, yet one ( the lower one) might end up on the scrap heap. There must be an economic law that says that this is a waste of resource.

Despite the idea that hard work gets results, with the influence of computers and the future role of Artificial Intelligence ,this may no longer be true. I myself like manual work, it gives me a good feeling , I can see the result of my efforts. Also I enjoy being given time to do a task and complete it , sometimes to perfection..

There can be a joy in work.

The only thing is everyone seems so unhappy in work. No one wants to be there. We’re just in it for the money ,we tell ourselves, and we ask for more money as we are so unhappy and that is the only thing that will make us happy.

Meanwhile, and this is my “turd” theory of Economics, the turds rise to the top. Ruthlessness and skullduggery by seemingly innocuous middle managers can turn into manipulative, self-serving profit seeking behavior , which takes it’s toll on the workforce and the standards within any organisation. You know what I mean , don’t you?

We blame the organisation, the corporate entity for whatever ills it has bestowed on us. Unfortunately it’s the people within those organisations that cause the problems. Some say Unions need to exist to solve this, but in my experience Unions are just as bad as the middle managers who will agree anything for their next pay rise. Union representatives are paid by the union , but whether or not they have a big enough budget to change things eg. help an employee with a legal claim on the company or a dispute,or even a health and safety issue is doubtful.

The Union Representative on the whole is powerless and it is the goodwill of the Company that they work for that enables them to have a role, attending meetings with executives and being first to know of the planned redundancies or closure of the factory , whatever it may be.

Union Representatives are basically harbingers of bad news, the CEO’s want to announce good news themselves. That’s nothing to do with the Unions, it’s the Corporation that has brought success.( and therefore deserves the reward).

Surely an insurance scheme that could help employees who need financial backing to pursue a claim with employers would be a better option .Free legal advice would also be helpful and it would no longer be under a banner of them or us. An employee resource that when things go wrong , there is somewhere to go to with the financial backing to address it. I would think that would stop many of the abuses. in the work place. Is any Government willing to put this in place?

There is no need for these massive powerful Unions who appear at Political Party Conferences and treat their members as if they are tied to one particular belief. Everyone has moved on from that. What employees want is to be treated fairly and with respect and when things go wrong to be able to address it without incurring huge fees or having to refer their case to an ambulance chasing no claim no fee firm of solicitors.

But what about the future, will there be any jobs for people to do. Of course there will be. We need things done, we need to have a reasonable standard of living, we want to have decent leisure time. We need things to” work” and therefore we need to work and we need to be paid for that work. No amount of Artificial Intelligence is going to solve that.

The argument that these hammering, plumbing, connecting, rubbish disposal, documenting, data analyzing, cleaning, health care and counselling, the list of jobs and needs is endless. The prospect that these tasks will somehow replaced by AI is ridiculous. And the business model that has some Computer Geek Mogul earning some God-Like Fortune by solving the difficulty of actually employing people is unattainable pie in the sky. We need people and we need each other.

Yet the Media will write endless articles about us being replaced by robots. I have real experience of this, my first graduate job was working in the Car Industry in the UK. The office had about one hundred and fifty people in it , it was like a chicken coop. Many years later all those roles were subcontracted and the office was maybe down to about twenty people. It made sense and in truth was inevitable.

During my chicken coop office period; robots were replacing manual workers on the shop floor , they were impressive beasts and the best solution for repetitive manual work. They were the future , and they were part of a manufacturing revolution in the Car Industry . That made sense. Please note we no longer manufacture cars in the UK in the quantities we used to , mainly because we were too expensive and despite robots taking over production to reduce labour costs production was moved to other Countries where labour was perceived as being cheaper. So the fact was they still needed labour, so the Robots didn’t save the day.

However not every manual job is so repetitive; and we are beginning to realise that mass production is becoming irrelevant and not necessary. The requirement to have masses of anything is becoming redundant and I can assure you when that demand drops and increasingly ( as happened in the electronic industry) the market is flooded and people are happy having the next best thing rather than the latest technology , or indeed as will increasingly happen ; recycled technology. Then Chief Executives start panicking and cutting costs. The workers go first and then the Executives who of course award themselves a big exit payout for managing the crisis.

The view that digitising and analoging everything saves time and reduces costs in the fields of the Arts and Literature is worrying .It also homogenises everything and takes the colour out of creativity . Are the only people who are inventive nowadays coders? I think not.

Infact, they are the least likely people to come up with an original idea, because their whole element of work is based on discipline and repetition sat behind a computer following a strict set of rules to achieve their goal. Not your average worker behavior.

So just as the top executives can’t see past their spreadsheets telling them that the only way forward is to reduce costs and that employing real people is wasteful and requires too much investment. Economists should be looking at the benefits in human input , creativity and honest working together and not this false team work, stab in the back, keep the competition at arms length philosophy that the workplace has turned into.

Can it be quantified , of course it can, we have for too long worked on a model of cost cutting without recognising the benefits of working together and accepting that there are jobs that need done , that they are valuable and that the quantitative benefit of working together is better value for money than some chief executive screwing employees into the ground by making them work harder for less benefits. Then running off with a pot full of cash and bonuses

I would say I haven’t notice this approach in any of the election manifesto’s, our options are more of the same and not anything new. Whoever gets in still sees the people as inconveniences and are looking for some miracle Truss and Kwarteng style economic wizzardy, where wealth trickles down and bankers and computer scientists will solve all the world’s problems. It just isn’t going to happen.

Chapter 6 Lobbying.

So here we are, the election is to be held on the 4th July and I’ve reached the halfway point of my Chapters. Apologies for Chapter 5’s whiff of righteousness about Alcohol and Drugs and the wish to escape every day life. Chapter 6, however falls into place nicely ;as we most probably all want to escape at the moment. Which brings me to lobbying.

Currently, it feels that there is quite a lot being lobbed at us. Least of all Nigel Farage and the onward march of Right Wing influence in Europe. Until the election. I had quite forgotten about Nigel Farage, he was just another expenses fueled, politician and journalist with purely self serving motives of whipping up ill thought out policies and prejudices. A one man band , a self-made millionaire( an economic success) .Using his so called charisma on a certain element of the British Public that most people in the quite United Kingdom would rather ignore.( No one likes to believe that people can hate others quite so much.)

Still here we are and he has jumped on the bandwagon and became a Leader of a Party with the Orwellian name of “Reform” “.Horrifically , if Reform could host enough candidates , then within a few weeks old ship mate Nigel could be Prime Minister. The previous leader of Reform was pushed aside and Nigel took over for this election, because Nigel is a good lad and very good at lobbying.

Lobbying can be good or bad depending your point of view on what is being lobbied for. I suppose it’s another form of persuasion and has been used by many through the centuries to achieve their aims, whether it’s a Royal Court arranging an advantageous marriage in medieval times or following on from Francis Drakes introduction of tobacco , the cigarette industry pushing back at the lobbyists successfully arguing about the implications to people’s health of smoking tobacco.

Lobbying in the Houses of Parliament is rife and as and industry has grown over the last fifty years to such an extent, that for many it is a full time occupation. It probably does contribute a fair whack to the gross domestic product. So perhaps that is a benefit. How much has lobbying affected the Government decision making process to the detriment of the General Public? Quite a lot I would say.

We seem to have forgotten that our vote should be the first step in policy making, but it is most definitely not. We elect our representatives who may indeed be lobbyists themselves with their own interests or have lobbyist sponsors.

On getting a seat in Parliament they immediately begin representing the views of their sponsors or indeed their personal beliefs. Apart from booting them out at the next election, we have no influence on what they choose to say in Parliament or indeed in the way they use their influence by having a seat in Parliament. Are there checks in place, if so , they don’t seem to be used very often. Perhaps a commons committee has been examining them for the last decade.

Hence, increasingly we’ve had the scandals of MP’s and House of Lord’s representatives doing deals for favours or asking questions in Parliament or indeed arranging meetings with key ministers. Some of whom actually specified how much there efforts can be quantified in monetary terms per hour.

For two hours “work” , ten thousand pounds. Well great for GDP , if they spend it in the UK, but how about if the spend it on renovating their French holiday home. I suppose it’s helping the European economy.

Sadly, though lobbying has implications far beyond , grubby politicians lining their own pockets and handbags .Increasingly lobbying is a profession and a full-time occupation What happens when the lobbying interest is from another international government . Have you ever felt perhaps that “News” is a bit one sided , that you end up listening to European news stations to actually find out what is happening in the World. That is the power of the professional paid lobbyist. They can start World War Three if they want , or they can at least make everything feel more unstable.

Ever feel that the media doesn’t seem to be able to say as much as they used to particularly during election time. The interviews and the debates all seem so insipid. There are no facts, only rhetoric. It’s like it’s been sanitised or as I like to think lobbitised. Voter beware is all I say.

Chapter 4 The Economics of Celebrity, National Lottery and Charity.

©GeraldineBanks2024

Have there been any economic studies about how Celebrity Culture , National Lottery and the Charity Sector really benefit the UK’s Gross Domestic Product ? Or are these sectors regarded as ancillary events and not part of the economic establishment . I turned to Google for the answer.

Firstly Celebrity and the Power of Attraction.

Celebrity Power

The involvement of a famous figure in the advertising campaign of a Brand can rapidly change customer perceptions that boost brand loyalty and consequently , improve stock prices.

Improve stock prices! No mention of GDP, so it might increase revenue for a specific product, eg. if the Celebrity likes to wear Orange Trainers, then the sales of those Orange Trainers will increase.

But does the sale of those Orange Trainers improve the Economy for everyone or only a select section of the Public. The Trainers can be sold at a premium price, due to the Celebrity Association. This price may exclude lower income families ( psychological implications) and also the profits made from the manufacturing and sale of said Orange Trainers will go to Companies who are making use of low income labour and poor working conditions in the Countries where these products are made.

Let’s face it how many products that start being manufactured in the home Country end up moving abroad. Dyson Hoovers being a prime example. This was the cost reducing ethos for a long time, one which basically crushed the manufacturing industries in Countries that followed it. Hence the emphasis on Construction jobs to keep low skill level people employed.

There is a high likelihood that the Orange Trainers are imported and the Shareholders of said Company are Global. So, depending on tax rules within the Country , then the profits may never benefit the Country where the Orange Trainers are sold. The perception though is that Orange Trainers are wonderful and that lower income earners will do everything they can to “own” a pair.

Thus the growth of wearing of the Orange trainers will be exponential and low income workers will be willing to work overtime or unsocial hours to earn money for them , which leads to firms being able to keep their head count down ( a constant corporate objective ) while basking in the profits that their “essential” product has brought them. Meanwhile the costs of the trainers will impact the Retail Price Index and have the potential to cause inflation and so cause a correction in the Economy for example to increase interest rates and make everything more expensive.

Suddenly the Beckham’s faces become less attractive don’t you think? Celebrity Culture has sku’ed the economy creating a need for something that does not exist and actually causing price inflation, unemployment and unsocial working hours . All in the name of keeping a Brand alive.

The National Lottery

Next , the National Lottery , The Postcode Lottery and all the Charities that now have their own Lottery, soon I have no doubt, Local Councils will introduce one to help with their running costs.

It’s harmless isn’t it , a few pounds every week, and you could end up a being millionaire. Fat Chance. The betting odds are so far against you. Yet you can buy tickets online , you can create an account. You don’t need to go out of the house. Your numbers can be chosen randomly for you or if you feel it will reduce your odds of winning you can have the same numbers each week.

The advertisements for the National Lottery are on TV, radio and in supermarkets and post offices throughout the UK. They say why not? You might win? Don’t be so negative, someone’s got to win , why not you. I believe they even have a National Lottery show on a Saturday Evening for the numbers to be chosen. I’ve never watched it and quite frankly I can’t be bothered researching if it’s still on. It was only a vehicle for Celebrities looking for a gig on a Saturday night. Definitely a connection there with Celebrity and tempting the punter to buy into the desire to win.

I’ve bought a few lottery tickets in my time, but I’ve never deliberately bought a scratch card. I’ve been given scratch cards in Birthday Cards which is quite fun. I don’t get it though actually buying these dreadful printed cards, what is that stuff you scrape off , is it plastic paint, does it decompose in the environment? Are the inks safe and where do most people throw them when they find out they’ve lost. I’ve watched a woman carelessly put one in a dog bin and thought , well she doesn’t care about anything does she? It’ll either be incinerated or go to landfill. It’s consumerism gone mad. Give her a dedicated refurbished mobile phone that she can scratch away on a touch screen forever if she wishes.

I’m pretty certain lottery tickets aren’t recyclable either, the paper has a coated feel and the inks must be permanent and not water soluble. I wonder where they all end up?

Doubt if the Government and the various Charities involved in running them will ever get rid of their ” Cash Cow” Lotteries. It’s really up to the consumer to decide that they are a waste of time and energy and the return in momentary pleasure is just not worth it.

To an extent, some years ago that did happen, there was definitely a lot of cynicism about the National Lottery, people were just not winning anything and gave up. Which is why the National Lottery have had to invent new options to play. Lotto, Set for Life; Euro millions; Thunder ball ; Hot picks ; Euro million Hot picks and Instant Win.

A lot of human time, energy and creativity has gone into ensuring that hard earned cash is frittered away in the name of good causes such as the Covent Garden Opera House. A summary of the Beneficiaries are Health Education, Environment and Charitable Causes( 40% )Sport( 20%) Arts (20%) Heritage(20%). I wonder if the Houses of Parliament will be refurbished with Lottery Money?

The Government Contract is awarded every 10 years by the Gambling Commission with a fixed 10 year license, providing the licensee with a clear period for investment planning. ( Sounds like a Pension Fund? Read on……).

The current incumbent was appointed 1st February 2024 and is Allwyn Entertainment Ltd who is a subsidiary of Allwyn AG who bought out Camelot and are Europe’s leading Lottery operator The takeover of Camelot was financed by the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund. In essence a lottery ticket purchase in the UK is helping a retired Ontario Teacher which is I suppose a form of Charity allowing for Canada’s struggling economy.

In summary, the sales and marketing of Gambling in the UK is controlled and promoted by all Governments whatever party. It’s a cash cow and the population are bombarded by earning from risk. Yes it’s fun , but wouldn’t it be nice if the odds were a bit better. As for Celebrities, they’ll do anything for a quick buck, we need to start saying no to them, they are no better or worse than us.

Chapter 3 Homelessness and New Builds

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

The image above says two things to me, it says “here  the keys to your new home “or it says, “Your home has just been repossessed, and you can no longer live there.”

Forty years ago, the banking rules allowing people to buy property were relaxed, and Adam Smith and Milton Friedman’s theories on free markets were unleashed on an avaricious property buying public. The bankers had a field day, and property became the be-all and end all. House prices started going up and, in truth, don’t seem to have ever stopped for properties in the right location.

The percentage of the population that owns a first home worth a million pounds has grown significantly. (Not even going to mention the second homes).

There is a housing shortage, so we must build more houses and people must accept that they will be living closer to each other, and that their  lives  will be disrupted while  the infrastructure, such as water, sewage ,power and broadband are laid to these new properties. To hell with any sort of planning, build , build, and build.

What is the real economic reason for this, is there really a shortage of housing for high earners? Is there really a shortage of housing for low earners?

Builders are just not interested in building houses for low earners, they want to build minimum four beds with garages, really they want to make big bucks, so they want a price tag of say £500,000, so they can make a 50% or 60% profit. That is the economic reality.

Councils can try as hard as they may, to negotiate an element of social housing , but building a property that will sell for £120,000 is hardly worth getting out of bed for if you are a builder. There are bigger fish to fry.

We are building new builds for people who are already on the property ladder and wish to upscale or downscale ( depending on their time of life). If you are close to retirement , you are probably thinking of a low maintenance bungalow.

It’s like private club, if you are on the ladder then you can play the game. If you are trying to get on the ladder then it’s a slippery slope unless you have help from your property owning relatives.

Hopefully the economists are doing surveys on this and there is a Think Tank that says low earners will never be in a position to own their own property and that they have been excluded unfairly  from one of the key economic indicators of success in society.

Actually , no, I don’t think that study has been done , or indeed the report written, or if it has they are being very quiet about it.

Getting back to the basic building blocks ,the real reason for continuing to build more houses for the rich is to keep the poor working. We are building new builds purely to employ labour in low-level jobs.

Building site workers on the whole are well paid and work at all sorts of jobs, not just skilled trades , like bricklaying , electricians and JCB drivers , but the ancillary staff, the humpers and dumpers or  as they are known the CSCS Green Labourers Card holders.

Without CSCS, you can not work on any building site, whether for housing , road infrastructure, or any municipal project. I suppose it ensures that the people working in locations that are inherently dangerous do not endanger themselves or others, which, considering the Construction Industry has a high accident rate.

Still,a lot of those Labourers will have few or any qualifications and will leave school to work on building sites.Unless we build and do infrastructure jobs(like repairing potholes),there are  no jobs for them.

I suspect the government realises that and hence Build,Build and Build.Also Building is like the Brewery Industry,there are a lot of  Political Grandées from all parties who have an  interest in the construction Industry.

The late Lord McAlpine, being one of them who ended his days running a Tuscany  Bed and Breakfast with his young wife , his Company McAlpine’s was found to have a database of  blacklisted CSCS workers who would not be employed on any McAlpine sites either because of a history of  Union Activity,or because they had raised concerns about Health and Safety at work.

Please don’t tell me  people like Lord McAlpine don’t have an interest in  controlling workers  and, therefore, the labour market.

Free movement of labour my foot. House Building for profit and employment for the lowly qualified,an economic success story,sponspred by lobbyists , political grandées and politicians alike.

Mind you, those building workers are the lucky ones(when they are working,they have a reasonable income).If you are on a low income and living in the private rental market,you are one monthly payment away from being homeless.

A reality that came close to me when my next-door neighbour had a no-fault eviction served on her. There was nothing she could do,despite not wanting to move out, she had to.I was very shocked.I didn’t know how much the law had been changed in favour of buy-to-let landlords.

Another  lady told me that her daughter had moved in with her boyfriend and was renting out her house.The agent handling the rental  told her that the daughters new tennant who had just moved in 3 months prior at an agreed monthly rate should be asked for an increase in rent to reflect the market value.The daughter said there was no need as the rent was covering the mortgage.The increase was nothing to do with the market,but was  been driven by a  greedy agent who wanted more for is fee.A Microeconomics nightmare.

In other words,there is a dangerous instability in the rental housing market,backed up by legislation put in place over a number of years and free market beliefs that anything goes.

The buy to let model simply does not work,as even on the supply side ,if the landlords have overstretched themselves and aren’t able to pay either for repairs or indeed their mortgage loans due to increased interest rates. Then, the property will be sold or repossessed.Resulting in more instability.Surely the economists could have produced a predictive model for this?

The answer my friend  is blowing in the wind.

We have had numerous governments who haven’t cared about what happened to people who weren’t part of what they perceived as the elite ,and now those people are  exposed to potential homelessness. 

There are no signs of a solution other than making buy to let Landlords bankrupt themselves, trying to do what social housing used to do  with public funding.

The costs of providing four walls and decent living conditions , whether in the private sector or the public sector, are the same.

There was no benefit in putting it into the hands of non-professionals and amateurs.We need social housing, not for profit, and that supplies decent living conditions for all.It’s a basic human requirement.

Anyone fancy living in a barge?

Introduction

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

Acknowledgment

I’d like to thank the current UK Government and current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for organizing, a general election. Excellent timing for my Book on Economics. I had already decided to write it because of f Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. If they can write books about Economics and foist their nutty theories on us, then I see no reason why I shouldn’t enter the fray. In fact, I predict this will be a best seller and I won’t bankrupt the UK and crash the Global Markets. I can’t promise I’ll save them but at least I’ll make everyone feel better and let them know that it isn’t their fault. No need to feel guilty that you don’t work hard enough, aren’t’ clever enough or come from the wrong side of Town.

Students currently studying Economics and the lecturers and tutors teaching them while doing their research and their various phd’s in ” Behaviour in Random Markets” and increasingly obscure economic theory , you’ve missed the boat , because this is the only book anyone is ever going to need. No more theories from Grizzly old Men sitting at their desks,(Keynes, Smith and Friedman ). The World has changed beyond anything those men could have imagined, they’ve been left behind in World where gainsaying means more than evidence and where the rich imagine a World without the inconvenience of ” workers”. Robots will do the work for us, we don’t need people and their emotions and inconveniences. The Digital Economy is here, the people will play to our tune , or will they?

That crazy year when Liz and Kwasi caused a mighty upheaval in the financial markets and wasted so much money on their theories. When the whole economy nearly came crashing around our ears I thought at the time that someone is going to have to pay for this sometime. Recently with my income severely reduced and budgeting being high on my agenda, I have thought well we’re all in the same boat, but how did we get here?

To be honest it wasn’t really Liz’s and Kwasi’s fault, I suppose they tried to put their “theories ” into practice and let’s just say that there were a lot of flaws in them. Things had been on the skids along time and I suppose their colleagues thought they were going to be our economic saviors. Which brings me to my first point about Economics.

There are NO Economic Saviors or Geniuses who can make something out of nothing. Much as the theorists and intellectuals would like to think. It’s a fallacy. Resources are finite. Electoral promises are poppy cock. Two and Two as some point has to equal Four if the Chicken dinner can be cooked and served on time. Know what I mean?

So let me get on……My Chapters

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”