1310 days ago
It may have escaped your attention if you are not a member of the GAWA or do not know what it is, but for the first time ever, the Northern Ireland Women’s Team has qualified for a major tournament. And thus. this St George’s Day I celebrate by starting down the path to get tickets for Euro 2022 to introduce my daughter to Northern Irish football. As is the norm I don’t pay any great attention to the English National day but I certainly take no offence from its celebration. My wife, on the other hand, may have parents born in India but identifies, on the census, as do most folks born in Nottingham, as English. For our kids growing up in Wales this will all be rather confusing.
1971 days ago
In today’s bearcast I discuss how and why the word bugger come from Bulgaria, at least according to my hero Paddy Leigh Fermor. I look at Versarien (VRS) and why it will end in tears, report that Anglo African Oil & Gas (AAOG) is trying to raise £9 million at 5p and or via a death spiral, look at Hurricane (HUR), Prospex (PXOG), Grand Vision Media Holdings (GVMH) – as per my prescient piece HERE - Condor (CNR) and uber dog Premier African Minerals (PREM)
3976 days ago
I realise this may not win me many friends among the Daily Mail reading classes but I need a new waitress as Real Man Pizza Company in Clerkenwell is opening up a new venture in its basement area from February and if you are reading this in Romania and Bulgaria today feel free to get in touch.
Naturally I shall advertise in the UK as well. £6.50 an hour or whatever the minimum wage is. 30 hours a week. Job waitress and also plongeur. She needs to be presentable. To like very hard work, to be numerate and to speak good English. Notwithstanding the need to be numerate and to speak good English a few products of the UK Comprehensive schooling system will be qualified.
But will they apply? Like hell they will. You see I have done this before and young Brits would rather live on welfare/go to a crap former poly to study a worthless degree than go get a job which involves hard work and pays the sort of wage an unskilled less than 20 year old can expect to get as a first job. If they work hard they can expect to earn more in due course, I am a fair employer.
But folks. You always start at the bottom.
What the immigration loathing wolf-whistlers of UKIP and the Tory right fail to realise is that the Romanians/Bulgarians are not taking jobs from Brits but are needed to do the jobs Brits refuse to take.
I shall give home grown talent the chance to apply. But since I know from bitter and hard experience that this is doomed I also make this offer to our friends in Transylvania, Sofia and Bucharest. If you want to work hard, improve your English and have the skills I want we want to offer you a job. Can you start February 1?
3987 days ago
I never thought I would be writing this but I suppose it had to happen eventually: I find myself agreeing 100% with what our thoroughly deranged Business Minister Vince Cable had said. The man is just bang on the money. The subject is immigration.
Cable, who I accept is mad as a hatter 99% of the time, says that the Tories are running scared of UKIP and so are engaging in wolf whistle politics on the subject of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration after Christmas. As Cable, Call Me Dave Cameron, the frightful Theresa May and Nigel Farage all know full well, the numbers arriving here will not be gargantuan. None will be able to claim benefits for quite some time and so those coming here will be those willing and wanting to do low paid jobs.
British business needs such folk because our welfare system is far too generous and so has created a whole layer of society which is fit only to undertake unskilled/low skilled labour but refuses to do so. In making that point Cable is again bang on the money. The Business Secretary understands that for GDP to grow as it should we need these immigrants.
The facts are:
4016 days ago
Why did I rise to the bait of a twitter fight with UKIP loons regarding immigration? Paul Nutter UKIP’s deputy Fuhrer is on C5 News tonight ranting on about how we will be swamped with millions of Romanians and Bulgarians on 2nd January.
What Nuttall does not say is that Romanians already here, on average, pay 34% more in taxes than they take in benefits, which is a far better ratio than native born Brits. Romanian workers are good news for Britain. What Mr Nutter also declines to mention is that folk arriving in 2014 will not be able to claim a single cent in benefits for at least a year. So they will take the low paid jobs Britain needs to fill if it is to compete.
Aha…they are stealing British jobs. So goes the chant from UKIP followers on twitter.
Bollocks.
4162 days ago
It is a quiet night at Real Man (Monday always is) and so I am sitting here with two staff who are working away while I write. And so in wanders this old crone who says “I am from Bulgaria and have no money”. I rather sense that this will become an increasingly poor way for her to start a conversation.
The deal is that she cannot find work in the UK so would like those that do have work to give her some money. Hmmm so the two immigrants who are sitting here with me earning just above the minimum wage should hand over some of their after tax earnings to someone who came to the UK with the intention of begging and who will after January 1 supplement their begging income with welfare paid out of those taxes.
My response: if you cannot find a job in the UK you should go back to Bulgaria. Is that a bit harsh?
No. I believe in unlimited immigration (I am such a frigging tree hugger) but no welfare payments until you have paid five years taxes (I’d apply the same rule to the begging home-grown Jeremy Kyle class too). But begging is a crime. In my book – three strikes on that count are you are out. Why the hell should I give any of my after tax income earned by working my nuts off to folks who opt not to work or, worse, have moved to the UK with the explicit intention of not working?
Now what sort of “ist” does that make me?
a) a racist
b) a class-ist
c) a nationalist
d) a realist?
4315 days ago
It is quite clear that, as things stand, anyone in Romania or Bulgaria will be able to celebrate New Year’s Day by coming to live in Britain. We are after all brothers in arms in the EU. Given that the average net wage in Romania is £275 a month, with many earning far less, while in the UK families can trouser up to £500 a week tax free on benefits you do not need the brains of Lloyd George to see what is going to happen next. Yet our political elite seem either not to care or not to have an answer and so they resort to lies and smears.
Is it unreasonable for you and I to object to the idea that Romanians and Bulgarians will in very large numbers make a sensible economic choice and move to the UK? Are we racists for objecting? Of course not. The fact is that the UK has mammoth debts and is running a huge budget deficit. So having to pony up vast amounts in benefits for folks from out East is beyond our means. We cannot afford it. This is not an argument about race simply basic economics. Britain is going bankrupt and this could accelerate that process.
