The Brexit Thread

[sw2borshch]

I think I've encountered more non- British European workers in Dublin QSRs & pubs than I ever have in the NE and I've only ever had a weekend in Dublin.

And I've been in a lot of takeaways and pubs, not least because I used to do it for a living.

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah, comparatively more than pre-crash. Most workers in convenience stores seem to be Central/Eastern European, South Asian or Brazilian. Can imagine the Centra/Mace/Spar franchising model leads to very shitty/quite likely illegal working conditions.

[DCI Harry Batt]

What's a QSR?

[Lang Spoon]

Quick serve restaurant?

[sw2borshch]

Ah, yeah, sorry, quick service restaurants. I've got a head full of this, Base Erosion Profit Shifting and Effective Tax Mismatch Outcomes these days.

[Fussbudget]

I know dozens of EU27 nationals working in the UK, including a fair few from Eastern Europe, and all the ones in low paid service and retail jobs either have no qualifications (or I guess humanities degrees), or are working as a barista or call centre worker or whatever while studying or trying to get a foothold in the creative industries. All the ones I know with qualifications in science, finance, medicine etc. work in highly paid professional jobs.

Now I know my social circle isn't a representative sample, but all the same I'm not convinced that "Lithuanian mechanical engineer burger flipper" is a major demographic.

[sw2borshch]

*shouts upstairs* 'hey, I've got a humanities degree!'

[Lang Spoon]

Oh, the Humanities! Spent over 5 years working in call centres of one type or another as well. Can’t serve coffee for shit but.

[Fussbudget]

Haha. I was talking to a Lithuanian at work the other week as it happens. She's in her late 20s and is some kind of project manager in another government department, on about 40k a year.

[Gerontophile]

Haha. I was talking to a Lithuanian at work the other week as it happens. She's in her late 20s and is some kind of project manager in another government department, on about 40k a year.

In Lithuania?

[Nefertiti2]

maybe it's a temporary thing something people do when getting additional qualifications or getting their english up to speed,

[Fussbudget]

Gero, no, in Yorkshire.

[sw2borshch]

So, something I've thought about is that at the top we have lots of money going out of the country with mainly US multinationals moving their profits to the US or untaxed cash pools in the Caribbean or wherever and at the bottom with various people sending subventions 'home' or saving up then returning home and buying a house/starting a business/whatever.

How much does this actually matter? And how much does it happen the other way round? Is there still a lot of UK business that extracts profits from abroad for UK shareholders/pension funds? Do we have many workers abroad who are funding UK based families (like our dad did)? Does it about balance out? Does it have any macroeconomic downsides for the UK?

[sw2borshch]

Or our pensioners all going to Spain? Spending their pensions elsewhere, but cheaper re healthcare?

[Lang Spoon]

Imagine the piss soaked panic at Malaga Airport next March if there’s no deal and the planes grounded the next day. Will be like the fall of Saigon but all leathery skinned like. Can’t imagine Espain or Greece remaining blasé about these fairly unproductive, unintegrated folk staying on if there’s no agreement on their continuing access to Health and social care.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, comparatively more than pre-crash. Most workers in convenience stores seem to be Central/Eastern European, South Asian or Brazilian. Can imagine the Centra/Mace/Spar franchising model leads to very shitty/quite likely illegal working conditions.

It would be tough to get away with wages like that here now. I know that it would have been pretty grim during the er hard times, but things are going really well here, and have been for a number of years now.

It's difficult to get a read on this sort of thing in Galway, because Galway is such a weird place. There's a population of 90,000. One third of the population of the city are college students, so that makes things very confusing, and half of the remaining 60,000 are from somewhere else. whether that's mozambique or mayo, and there isn't really all that much going on in the hinterland, so it's difficult to categorize. There are a lot of irish Bar staff, but there are a lot of student bar staff, and there are a lot of bar staff from other countries, in large part because there are a hell of a lot of bar staff.

the thing that usually limits new arrivals to relatively low paid service jobs or building (which is far from low paid) initially is Language. It would be interesting to see exactly how the employment profile of those still here after the huge surge from eastern europe between 2006-2008, when a quarter of a million people arrived from the EU 12 in two years, and most didn't go home. Much like irish migrants to the UK in the 50's People don't come to Ireland to spend the rest of their lives stacking shelves.

[Lang Spoon]

Working conditions isn’t only about wages.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

So, something I've thought about is that at the top we have lots of money going out of the country with mainly US multinationals moving their profits to the US or untaxed cash pools in the Caribbean or wherever and at the bottom with various people sending subventions 'home' or saving up then returning home and buying a house/starting a business/whatever.

How much does this actually matter? And how much does it happen the other way round? Is there still a lot of UK business that extracts profits from abroad for UK shareholders/pension funds? Do we have many workers abroad who are funding UK based families (like our dad did)? Does it about balance out? Does it have any macroeconomic downsides for the UK?

whatever about people sending home the stones and the slates, (To pay for a gravestone for the parents, and to put slates on the roof of the family home) most of the movement of money comes at the level of the ultra rich. The money flows of the little people doesn't add up to much. Particularly when the City of london sits right at the heart of the Uk Economy.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Working conditions isn’t only about wages.

It's also hard to pull shit with conditions when there are alternatives.

[Lang Spoon]

Not if you are working over your legal limit hours as a Brazilian language student (as was once Chinese Centra/Spar/food processing workers in the long long ago Tefl days when I was having students come to class ready to sleep through the 3rd conditional after a 10 hour night shift they did 4 or 5 days a week). Some bosses are just cost cutting cash in hand tax dodging cunts. And they can always find a new victim.

If your employer can get you deported, you might well keep schtum.

[sw2borshch]

Berba, yeah, it's not big money, but those with the least have the greatest marginal propensity to consume, so the multiplier effect from all those £50 a month or so happens elsewhere. Does it all add up to much? I dunno, but does anyone?

[Tubby Isaacs]

So, something I've thought about is that at the top we have lots of money going out of the country with mainly US multinationals moving their profits to the US or untaxed cash pools in the Caribbean or wherever

Osborne in 2015 broad in a "Google Tax" on companies that do that.

https://www.ft.com/content/4f7aed86-...2-cde3f882dd7b

Receipts aren't huge at the moment, but HMRC seem to be working on it and should get a fair bit more.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Didn't we have a major crackdown on language schools when a bunch of them went arse over tit? I don't know if there are that many people in that situation any more.

SW such payments once accounted for nearly 20% of our GDP in the fifties.

[Ginger Yellow]

The nature of remittances is that they tend to make up a decently sizeable proportion of GDP for the recipient countries (5% to 15% is typical, I believe), but negligible for the countries sending them.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Didn't we have a major crackdown on language schools when a bunch of them went arse over tit? I don't know if there are that many people in that situation any more.

We've had an ongoing crackdown for over 10 years. Some of the "bogus colleges" as we call them, were engaged in comical passing off.

International University Robert Gordon (not to be confused with the genuine Robert Gordon University)
Manchester Open University (not to be confused with the genuine University of Manchester or the Open University)
The University of McAllister
Rutland University, Leicester (not to be confused with the genuine Leicester University)
Bransfield University
Warnswick University (not to be confused with the genuine Warwick University)
Wolverhamton University (not to be confused with the genuine Wolverhampton University)

"Rutland University Leicester" is a particular favourite of mine. Maybe Eric Idle was running it.

Not so funny if you've been ripped off by these funsters, of course.