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"British Jobs for British Workers"

As most of you know I'm a Spaniard so I shall declare an interest in this from the off. But I have to say I find the expression rather dislikable and ugly. And now it is being quoted, and making front page news.

Admittedly the refinery workers using the sentence as a slogan have genuine reason to be angry- shipping in foreigners to do a specific job does not seem right- but as it turns out, Gordon Brown used this slogan in 2007 as a soundbite.

In this particular case the expression might carry some weight; but I hope it is not repeated elsewhere. For starters it is wrong and misplaced- if foreigners stopped working tomorrow, many of their positions would simply not be filled, and for seconds it is a bit too BNP-ish for my liking.

I guess history shows that in times of hardship people turn on 'obvious' targets such as foreigners. Time to pack up my suitcases? :eek2:
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Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    You're only about 18 months behind, but nice to see you coming on board with me on this one. :p

    I am particularly enjoying the way that everything our psychologically flawed Prime Minister has said in the past is coming back to bite him on the arse. He claims that he'd spent the past 10 years arguing for stronger regulation. Wrong - there are countless instances of him stating the opposite. There's even one time when he said "we will take the fight for deregulation to Europe."! He said that he'd abolished "boom and bust". Now that everyone's cornering him, he still refuses to admit that he was wrong. He pretends he'd never said anything of the kind - nice try Macavity, but you don't fool us. No wonder there are rumours about his mental health doing the rounds on the blogs.

    Now it's this "British jobs for British workers" thing again. It was a sham when Gordon first said it and he knew it - he knows full well that, thanks to the EU, anyone in the nation states can come work here and there's fuck all he can do to stop them. According to The Times, BNP supporters have been trying to join the protests around the country. A spokesman for the racist political party said "Yesterday [Thursday] was a great day for British nationalism.". The workers at the protests were having none of it. That was a well-played card by the BNP, weren't it? Thanks to these morons, the Government's line that this action is based on xenophobia was given some credence. The truth is it's more of a protest about how Labour is driving the economy into the ground. Fucking morons.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It does come across as a very irresponsible and idiotic thing to say by a Prime Minister (or Chancellor, whatever he was at the time), doesn't it?

    Thanks to it, a perfectly legitimate protest is being hijacked by those with ulterior motives.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    It does come across as a very irresponsible and idiotic thing to say by a Prime Minister (or Chancellor, whatever he was at the time), doesn't it? Thanks to it, a perfectly legitimate protest is being hijacked by those with ulterior motives.
    Oh yes. Yet Gordon's reaction is oh-so-predictable. Apparently, he DOESN'T regret using that expression, according to a No.10 spokesperson. Click here.

    Still, it's nice to see that the Labour Party is about to be mired in another leadership crisis, the second in a year. Last year, Brown was nearly forced out by it - here's hoping they go that little bit further this time.

    UPDATE: The strikes are all over the front pages of Saturday's newspapers. I wonder how many mobile phones he'll be throwing at the wall tomorrow morning. The writing's on the wall...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    About fucking time if you ask me. Shame it's taken nationwide strikes for McBroon to realise what such a mess he and Blair have gotten us into.

    I'm all for love-your-neighbour and all that hippy guff, but when people are losing jobs left right and centre because of the current economic climate (whose blame does NOT rest solely on the banks), you have to look out for you and yours. And in the Government's case, that means British citizens, not EU citizens. They were voted in by the British electorate to serve the British electorate and safeguard their best interests.

    I know I sound a little like the Daily Mail but occasionally, even they're right about something.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    if foreigners stopped working tomorrow, many of their positions would simply not be filled,
    :

    the point really is that we should only let people in to fill the jobs that cant be fillied, if theres a british job and a british person to fill it then they should get it. simple as.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    So if x number of people go for an interview for a certain job, and the right person for the job happens to be a foreigner, you're saying the employer should employ a British person of inferior qualities who is not going to do the job nearly as well?

    That'll go down well with employers :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    no what im saying is they shouldnt be here unless they have skills that are needed in the uk,
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    With the way things are at the moment I don't have a problem with it to be honest. I'd far rather a compan employ a British born person than somebody who's only going to send the money elsewhere.

    If there's a gap to be filled then fair play, I'll welcome and foreign workers, but I'm not happy with them being picked in place of British born workers simply becaue they;ll work for half the cost and live in some poxy caravan.
    Weekender Offender 
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    About fucking time if you ask me. Shame it's taken nationwide strikes for McBroon to realise what such a mess he and Blair have gotten us into.
    Just one problem with that. He DOESN'T get just how much of a mess that Labour have made of this country. Arrogance and a refusal to look facts in the face are part of his personality and his politics - that's the central problem. Ever since the leadership problems he experienced last summer, Brown's been stuck in a bunker mentality. Whenever he was asked for his opinion on whether he'd have a job as PM in three months time, he just banged on about "getting on with the job". No convincing answer to those who doubted him, no new ideas to excite the voters, just the same meaningless response every single time.

    It's been exactly the same during the downturn. Ask him for any kind of response to the current problems, and he just drones on about "giving hard-working families the real help that they need now". (all these are actual Brown quotes) If he gets criticised, he immediately claims that they're on the side of the Tories, who would "do nothing" about the "problems which began in America". This line would be a little more credible if he hadn't been stealing Tory policies over the economy, and if he hadn't been Chancellor for the past 10 years.

    Brown just doesn't get it. Why do you think he's so terrified of calling a general election? Because he knows he will go down in history as one of the worst Prime Ministers in history. He's a dead duck in denial.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    when people are losing jobs left right and centre because of the current economic climate (whose blame does NOT rest solely on the banks

    Who else, exactly, are you pointing the finger of blame at ?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Skive wrote: »
    With the way things are at the moment I don't have a problem with it to be honest. I'd far rather a compan employ a British born person than somebody who's only going to send the money elsewhere.

    If there's a gap to be filled then fair play, I'll welcome and foreign workers, but I'm not happy with them being picked in place of British born workers simply becaue they;ll work for half the cost and live in some poxy caravan.
    That's not the issue though, is it? The company already have their employees. They're not going to fire them all and hire an all-British workforce instead (even if it was legal to do that). The issue is that an Italian company won the contract, rather than a British company. But it's not as if British companies don't do the same thing in other countries. If we want to sort such things, then it will require all of the workers of Europe to get together, and attempt to come to some arrangement where local people are used on local projects wherever possible, rather than attacking each other, which seems to be the case atm.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Who else, exactly, are you pointing the finger of blame at ?

    The government and the public must also shoulder some of the blame but that's for another thread.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/30/tradeunions-protest

    For my part I think Seamus Milne has it right
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The government and the public must also shoulder some of the blame but that's for another thread.

    They sound like the words of a banker.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru

    Good article. I don't think we should mistake using Gordon Brown's words against him in a protest for agreeing with the political bile of the likes of the BNP.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    They [Thunderstruck's words] sound like the words of a banker.
    Absolute drivel. If you have a spare 9 minutes, this video of a Bremner, Bird & Fortune spoof done especially for The South Bank Show explains the roots of this situation extremely well. The USA started all this by selling crap houses to "black men in string vests" (to quote the video) who couldn't afford to pay the mortgages. This madness carried on into the UK - every bank was desperate for a slice of the pie. This was partly driven on by the countless shows like Location Location Location, all of which were saying "OMG, everyone's like gotta buy a second house in the country right now!". You didn't hear the likes of Kirstie Allsopp and that bald twat bothering to stop for a second to ask whether people could actually afford these huge mortgages they were taking on, did you?

    The banks were breathtakingly stupid. Confidence in these institutions cannot return until every single member of the bank's boards is removed from their job. My own bank is 70% owned by the Government, for fuck's sake. But the middle-classes have a lot to answer for. They could have easily decided "no, I'm not going to take part in this madness of keeping up with the Joneses. I'm happy living in my house". But they didn't. They bought into it - and that makes them just as culpable as the bankers.

    *Bloody hell, I'm sounding more and more like a Left-wing libertarian every day...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    Absolute drivel. If you have a spare 9 minutes, this video of a Bremner, Bird & Fortune spoof done especially for The South Bank Show explains the roots of this situation extremely well.

    I will not be so rude as to call that absolute drivel but if you are talking about the roots you need to go back almost a century to 1914. (What you are witnessing now is the winter of discontent after falsely perceived glorious summer. The leaves have been shed).

    That was the year the bankers got a (legal) licence to steal. That seems to be the nature of politics. Politicians acting as the bankers' foot soldiers. (That malfeasance continues unabated;check out the Banking Bill currently going through the commons for evidence).
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    The banks were breathtakingly stupid. Confidence in these institutions cannot return until every single member of the bank's boards is removed from their job. My own bank is 70% owned by the Government, for fuck's sake. But the middle-classes have a lot to answer for. They could have easily decided "no, I'm not going to take part in this madness of keeping up with the Joneses. I'm happy living in my house". But they didn't. They bought into it - and that makes them just as culpable as the bankers.

    *Bloody hell, I'm sounding more and more like a Left-wing libertarian every day...

    Which leads me to ask, why are you doing business with any bank ? Doesn't that make you culpable ?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I will not be so rude as to call that absolute drivel but if you are talking about the roots you need to go back almost a century to 1914. That was the year the bankers got a (legal) licence to steal. That seems to be the nature of politics. Politicians acting as the bankers' foot soldiers. (That malfeasance continues unabated; check out the Banking Bill currently going through the commons for evidence).
    Oh, I'm well aware of the menace of the Banking Bill. In particular, the clause which removes the requirement on the Bank of England to reveal how much money it has printed or issued each week. It's got me extremely suspicious as to how much quantitive easing* is really going on right now. This is an extremely dangerous bill which needs far more debate than it's getting. Mainly because economics is so incredibly complicated that hardly anybody understands it...

    As for politicians, they are a group of people whom should be viewed with extreme caution at all times and generally should not be trusted as far as they can be thrown. Show me a politician who is his own man and I will show you a liar.
    Which leads me to ask, why are you doing business with any bank? Doesn't that make you culpable?
    That's a nice attempt at entrapment, but you don't fool me. I haven't taken out any huge loan from the bank. I've been offered credit cards by them more than once, but I've always said no. I have no mortgage either, thank god. I simply have a bank account where I keep the money that I've earnt, along with a fair bit of savings. I'm certainly not culpable in this.

    * For those who don't know what quantitive easing is, it's a technical term for printing more money.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    They sound like the words of a banker.

    Yes they are. And the words of one who is sick to death of everyone blaming 'greedy bankers' when 99% of us have nothing to do with the trading of all the crap that contributed to this in the first place.

    I guess it's much easier for Joe Dumbarse to blame some faceless mass of people earning much more money than him than to turn the blame on himself for taking out loans he couldn't afford to buy that new car and plasma TV, maxing out half a dozen credit cards and living far beyond his means simply because he could and the credit was available. Plus there's the small matter of McBroon encouraging (well, forcing) the banks to lend well outside of their own risk appetites in order to artificially stimulate the economy to show what such a wonderful job he was doing while he was Chancellor.

    I guess what goes around comes around and now it's come back to bite him in the arse. Shame he's had to take so many people down with him.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    I haven't taken out any huge loan from the bank. I've been offered credit cards by them more than once, but I've always said no. I have no mortgage either, thank god. I simply have a bank account where I keep the money that I've earnt, along with a fair bit of savings. I'm certainly not culpable in this.

    * For those who don't know what quantitive easing is, it's a technical term for printing more money.

    Your post suggests that you have seen through the obsfucation. Why then have you chosen those charlatans to be the guardians of your wealth ?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Your post suggests that you have seen through the obsfucation. Why then have you chosen those charlatans to be the guardians of your wealth?
    Well, where else am I supposed to put the money?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    Well, where else am I supposed to put the money?

    Despite the somewhat cryptic style of the author(s),you might find a couple of suggestions in the initial article here:

    http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/index.html#anchor7417
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