Post Brexit Britain

[Nithavela]

Crops go to waste as UK farmers struggle to find workers

British farmers, forced to throw away tonnes of crops due to a shortage of labour, are calling for the UK government to bring back freedom of movement.

Some say they are having to recruit people from as far away as Kazakhstan to ensure no more food goes to waste.

It is the second year in a row that farmers have faced the problem of a lack of fruit and vegetable pickers.

“There’s been a mantra of trying to bring British people in, we tried that hard, absolute no goer," says Ottley, "it’s just not happening."

"We’ve been in engagement with Maidstone job centre for four years and we’ve had not a single person through it.”

They likely tried everything except paying a decent wage.

 

[High Fidelity]

They likely tried everything except paying a decent wage.

To be fair, even the foreign labour earned a decent wage. The problem is no one wants to do it.

My village is surrounded by arable farms and the potato crop was, last I heard a few years back, £15 an hour. They'd literally bring in the workers in mini vans. But it's incredibly demanding work. It's becoming more and more common in developed countries that the younger workers just don't want dirty or demanding work.

 

[Andrewn]

Crops go to waste as UK farmers struggle to find workers

British farmers, forced to throw away tonnes of crops due to a shortage of labour, are calling for the UK government to bring back freedom of movement.

Some say they are having to recruit people from as far away as Kazakhstan to ensure no more food goes to waste.

Don't they have enough migrants from Ukraine?

 

[Robban]

To be fair, even the foreign labour earned a decent wage. The problem is no one wants to do it.

My village is surrounded by arable farms and the potato crop was, last I heard a few years back, £15 an hour. They'd literally bring in the workers in mini vans. But it's incredibly demanding work. It's becoming more and more common in developed countries that the younger workers just don't want dirty or demanding work.

My goodness, do you really mean they have to put aside their i-phones
to pick up potatoes, whatever next?

 

[High Fidelity]

My goodness, do you really mean they have to put aside their i-phones
to pick up potatoes, whatever next?

Well, it's not something I'd ever do by choice.

Lost my job with bills to pay and no other option... sure, but by choice? Zero chance.

I've done my share of manual work in the past and I've worked hard to make sure I never have to again.

 

[Nithavela]

To be fair, even the foreign labour earned a decent wage. The problem is no one wants to do it.

My village is surrounded by arable farms and the potato crop was, last I heard a few years back, £15 an hour. They'd literally bring in the workers in mini vans. But it's incredibly demanding work. It's becoming more and more common in developed countries that the younger workers just don't want dirty or demanding work.

Wow, 15 pounds an hour for back breaking work in a dead end job you can only do a few months per year. How can the spoiled youth of great britain say no to that?

 

[Goonie]

Wow, 15 pounds an hour for back breaking work in a dead end job you can only do a few months per year. How can the spoiled youth of great britain say no to that?

And work located in the middle of nowhere , where the cost of petrol has risen to over £100 a tank.

 

[High Fidelity]

Wow, 15 pounds an hour for back breaking work in a dead end job you can only do a few months per year. How can the spoiled youth of great britain say no to that?

The job itself is awful, but £15 an hour is a lot more than they'd ordinarily earn with the CV many of them have.

It's a job, though, not a career. There are very few jobs you can walk in to and expect to provide enough financially for the rest of your life, especially without higher education or a set of skills that provides value beyond simple manual labour. Whether that should be the case is another discussion.

The main issue now is by virtue of it being 'transient' work, you need a steady turnover of staff and we've lost that now. We really ought to have a system in place like Canada where regional governments determine labour shortages and facilitate migration for entry-level/unskilled labour.

Brexit is the fiasco that keeps on giving.

 

[Robban]

Well, it's not something I'd ever do by choice.

Lost my job with bills to pay and no other option... sure, but by choice? Zero chance.

I've done my share of manual work in the past and I've worked hard to make sure I never have to again.

Nothing wrong with that, when opportunity knocks don't ask someone else to answer the door.

When Winston Churchill was very young, he fell into a bog and was very near drowning.

A Scottish farmer living nearby, his son heard Winston calling for help,
he ran to his help and pulled him out thereby saving his life.

Winstons father Randolf heard of it and wanted to thank the farmer by giving him a sum of money.

The farmer refused and meant his son only did what anyone would do.

Winstons father insisted that there must be a way to show his thankfulness.

He suggested taking the farmers son to London and provide him with an education.

So it was so,
the farmers name was Fleming, his son Alexander Fleming,(Penicillin)

Not everyone gets that kind of opportunity.

Before in the rare old days, whole families would go hop picking,

it got them out of smoggy towns and into the countryside where they were provided with accomodation, a working holiday of sorts.

 

[Robban]

Waterwheel.

Today I am rich, tomorrow a pauper,

today I am a pauper, tomorrow rich.

You never know.........

 

[mindlight]

The job itself is awful, but £15 an hour is a lot more than they'd ordinarily earn with the CV many of them have.

It's a job, though, not a career. There are very few jobs you can walk in to and expect to provide enough financially for the rest of your life, especially without higher education or a set of skills that provides value beyond simple manual labour. Whether that should be the case is another discussion.

The main issue now is by virtue of it being 'transient' work, you need a steady turnover of staff and we've lost that now. We really ought to have a system in place like Canada where regional governments determine labour shortages and facilitate migration for entry-level/unskilled labour.

Brexit is the fiasco that keeps on giving.

This is the sort of job I would have done as a student to cover the bills. Today with record levels of student debt it makes a lot of sense for students in their summer break. The pay is quite high considering no skills are required. That they cannot get workers might say more about the ease of obtaining work in other areas right now. Britain has full employment and a growing economy. That is not a symptom of a failing post_Brexit situation so must we conclude that overall BREXIT has been a success despite the challenges of Pandemic and War? It does however spell doom for a certain agricultural sector that needed migrant labor in the past.

 

[Robban]

My goodness, do you really mean they have to put aside their i-phones
to pick up potatoes, whatever next?

BTW, this post was not meant to be taken seriously, not a joke either.

Am sure there is a word for it.

Why post it then?

Well, wherever I look I see young and old, heads buried in an i-phone of some sort,

almost drugged.

 

[Red Gold]

Post Brexit Britain now sees that there is no "Brexit dividend" - on the contrary.

 

[lismore]

Post Brexit Britain now sees that there is no "Brexit dividend" - on the contrary.

Yes. What to do about it now, that's the question. God Bless

 

[Red Gold]

What to do about it now, that's the question.

Regret it!
That is all the UK can do about it.
And confess that that referendum was influenced by a lot of dirty anti-European lies from the brexiteers.

 

[lismore]

Regret it!
That is all the UK can do about it.
And confess that that referendum was influenced by a lot of dirty anti-European lies from the brexiteers.

Yes I think that's already happening, I saw a news report that Nigel Farage was lamenting the poor deal for fishermen after leaving the EU. They were better off inside in EU.

I mean what to do about it in a practical sense. For example, negotiate a new deal or seek to rejoin the EU> God Bless

 

[mindlight]

Regret it!
That is all the UK can do about it.
And confess that that referendum was influenced by a lot of dirty anti-European lies from the brexiteers.

That is the line the EU is selling and always intended by the tough negotiations. As someone who never supported BREXIT, I also sympathize. But the fact remains that a substantial number of British people want nothing to do with Europe. Many of them may even consider BREXIT to have been a mistake but they will not be told that by anyone. If Scotland gets its independence England may even become even more hardline on this.

It will take more subtlety than many politicians are currently exhibiting to bring Britain back into the fold. The US democrats are also playing a dangerous game by deliberately withholding a trade deal between the US and UK and using this as a way to get the British to toe the line on anything Biden decides. Trump was happy to give Britain a deal. If America wants to avoid the backlash of a Britain fed up being manipulated by the EU and by the US to fit inside their agendas then it needs to have a trade deal in place before the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, the economy has gone to pot with 10% borrowing, rampant inflation, and negative growth. Britain is a powder keg and people need to stop playing and get down to business. If not we are going to have a radical left government that will take a bankrupt Britain back into the EU with deeply anti-American instincts.