Um

[liadnan]

Eh?. What?. Read the second link having particular regard to the comments of David Greene of Civitas on the conclusions of the Rowntree Report in the first link: David Green, director of research group Civitas, said some people in the UK were finding it hard to compete with the newcomers. He said all the extra labour was keeping wages low and making it harder for people to work their way out of poverty.

(When I heard him on Today this morning I confused him with that appalling shit Andrew Green of "Migration Watch UK" and was rather concerned at the thought a mainstream thinktank like Civitas had picked up such a loon. To be fair I don't think he's quite of that order, on the other hand in his Today piece one could be forgiven for being confused between the two.)

Comments

[matgb]

Civitas not known for sane and rational behaviour a lot of the time though; it was them that republished that 19thC kids book on the history of the Empire IIRC, or something similar, because they thought kids should be brought up with jingoismpride.

[liadnan]

Oh, was that them? Maybe I take it back then.
Marshall's Our Island Story. Edwardian I think. I have a copy of the first edition.

[matgb]

That's the book I was thinking of, and yup, pretty sure it was them. Not 100% certain, but over 95% sure my memory is correct.

Like any good think tank, they publish good, well researched stuff. Sometimes. I think they do so just to make their hyperbolic claptrap sound more reasonable.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

some people in the UK were finding it hard to compete with the newcomers.

No, some people are just unemployable: there's a reason all the restaurants and bars in London use foreign labour instead of school leavers, it's because they do a day's work, look presentable, and if English is their second or even third language, at least they have a first language.

Five years ago, before the Poles started coming in large numbers, we had about half a million unemployed. There are now about two-and-a-half million low-level service sector jobs being done by Eastern Europeans; and we still have about half a million unemployed. Yes, there's got to be a lot of double-counting in that number - casual labour and short contracts are hard to count - But draw your own conclusions.

The conclusions I draw are either that there are half a million useless people in this country; or that the inflexibility of the benefits system is making it very difficult to follow the work, and to take on the short-term contracts and one-off jobs that are the bottom of the labour market.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

A case I came across that may interest you:

"Some years ago, Queenslander, Mr White, became a paraplegic in a car accident, and was in the process of negotiating a settlement from insurance company, Suncorp. At that point he received yet more bad news: he was dying of cancer and only had a few months to live.

His barrister, Gerard Mullins, was in a bind. Assuming Mr White could expect to live for another 28 years, at mediation, the insurance company was likely to offer around $900,000 for economic loss.

So Mr Mullins faced an ethical dilemma. At mediation, should he spill the beans and tell the insurance company his client only needed to be supported for six months, not 28 years?"

More (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2007/1934886.htm#transcript), decision(pdf) (http://www.lsc.qld.gov.au/documents/MullinsLPT06-012.pdf)