Britannia Radio

Nigel Farage is kidding himself if he thinks that the penny has 
finally dropped and that people now realise that because of the EU 
they can't do a damed thing about Italians shutting out British 
workers from British jobs.  sh jobs.

They still continue to ignore it as does a long article in today's 
Times  by Janice Turner---
"Total stupidity makes British patience snap
We should be angry that the skilled oilmen of Lindsey now find 
themselves flotsam and jetsam on the economic tide"

This article nowhere mentions the EU at all.  Nowhere does it tell 
you that provided the workers are paid the minimum wage there is 
nothing whatsoever a British government can do about it.  (The Swedes 
tried a year or two back with companies from one of the Baltic 
countries winning contracts and bringing in their workers.   The 
Europeran Court told them had to put up with it! )   It goes on about 
individual Europeans coming here to find work - competing in the 
market place. But when a whole contract package includes the work-
force Britiskh workers cannot even apply for a job.

Conservative Home's editor Tim Montgomerie also comprehensively 
misses the point in a piece entitled "British jobs for Italian 
workers today but there'll be Italian jobs for British workers tomorrow"

Certainly British companies do work abroad but the main labour force 
is generally recruited locally. Shunting brigades of workers across 
Europe is destructive of family life and breeds a race accustomed to 
be marched wherever their bosses want.  It is quite different from 
individuals seeking their own fortunes.

Richard North in his EUReferendim blog waxes exremely wrath nabout it 
all today and you'll find it below.
----------------------------
  NB  I sent out details from Private Eye of 2 other contracts like 
this one in Lincolnshire  in " Britain, the new colony!" dated 11 
January.   One is a gas-fired power station in Nottinghamshire with 
Spanish workers .

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cs
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BBC NEWS    31.1.09   at 11.12 am (via Politics Home)
People waking up to implications of EU deal, says UKIP leader

Nigel Farage, UKIP Leader

Mr Farage criticised measures allowing freedom of movement for EU 
workers, arguing instead that in times of recession in particular a 
work permit system was required.

"We are living in a modern global economy we want foreign workers 
skilled workers to come to this country to work . but we can do that 
under a work permit system", he said.

"I am fully in favour of free market capitalism, I am fully in favour 
of free trade," he added

"What we have with the European Union is complete open door policy 
any workers can come as they want to,"

"At a time of very rapidly rising unemployment at a time when our 
social security is straining seriously the last thing we need is an 
open door policy," he said.

Mr Farage said that he hoped voters would punish the three main 
parties for their failure to tackle this issue at the upcoming 
European elections.

"People woke up [Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.  They still don't 
realiser this! -cs] to what has been done in their name by 
politicians signing them up to this deal without being consulted".

He added: "We've got a chance in the EU elections in June this year 
to tell hose parties what we think of it".
===================
EUREFERENDUM Blog   31.1.09
Economically illiterate?


Amazingly, it is The Independent which is giving the elephant in the 
room its outing, telling us that the British strikers "protesting 
against the use of foreign workers" are up against one of the basic 
principles enshrined in European Union law. The piece, however, is a 
cut-and-paste from the Press Association's Geoff Meade.

He tells us that when the UK joined the then Common Market in 1973, 
"the country" (which does not, I hasten to add, include me) accepted 
the right of nationals of any other member state automatically to 
live and work in Britain. However, at that time "there were only 
eight other member states, all of them prosperous and unlikely to 
trigger mass migration to the UK to look for jobs."

And so it goes on, all Janet and John stuff but it's good to have the 
Europhile luvvies of The Independent given the facts of life every 
now and again. The very fact that the paper allows an EU dimension to 
be recognised is at least a start.

The Daily Telegraph is on the case as well, top of the list currently 
on Google News, reporting that nuclear power workers are poised to 
join the "growing wave of industrial unrest". Yesterday, more than 
3,000 oil and gas workers walked out in protest at against 
construction jobs going to foreign workers.

As well as Lindsey, which started it all off, at least 12 other sites 
including refineries, power plants, gas terminals and chemical plants 
staged demonstrations on yesterday. More than 1,500 workers staged 
unofficial walkouts at six sites in Scotland in support of the 
dispute. There were also demonstrations at the Wilton refinery on 
Teeside, the Milford Haven natural gas terminal, Pembrokeshire, and 
the South Wales Kilroot Power station in County Antrim.

In the Guardian we see the walkout described as a protest against the 
"victimisation of the British worker", although it seems there were a 
lot of British workers there, gainfully employed. Most of them had 
blue uniforms and these ghastly yellow hi-viz jackets on, though. I 
guess they will be finding a lot of work to do as this recession 
develops and people finally realise quite how badly they have been 
betrayed.

Nevertheless, union organiser Bernard McAuley doesn't seem to have 
got the point when he addressed workers in Lindey, clambering on to a 
flatbed truck to tell them that it was "wrong to ship in workers from 
the continent when north Lincolnshire had plenty of unemployed 
builders who could do the job." That is what the EU is all about, 
chuck. You ain't got any rights any more, at least no more rights 
than the itinerant Latvian who is wants to drop in for a job.

That, actually, is the issue. If a nation is to mean anything, it 
means being able to control access, and our government (accountable 
to us) to decide who can come in and work, and who cannot. It is not 
the principle of whether foreign workers should come in and take 
jobs. It is that our now provincial government has no control over 
the matter.

A leader in The Times has a go at this, castigating Brown for his 
facile "British jobs for British workers" slogan coined in 2007, 
telling us that, "the UK is bound through membership of the European 
Union to welcome workers from other EU states."

It then goes on to tell us that "it is economically illiterate to 
suppose that domestic living standards and employment are damaged by 
the free movement of labour." Yea, right! Tell that to the guys at 
Lindsey who are looking at foreign workers taking up "their" jobs.

Whatever the economic arguments, they are going to be hard put to 
accept that the advantages for the employer in hiring labour at the 
lowest price possible are going to spill over into the broader 
economy and benefit them.

And, if there are no controls at all, what happens when the whole 
British labour force is on the dole, while the jobs are done for 
foreigners - except for those chaps in yellow jackets? Who buys then 
buys products and pays the taxes?

In this context, the Daily Mail quotes Derek Brassington, 54, a steel 
erector from Chesterfield. He has worked refinery industry for 30 
years and was near the front of the crowd at the Lindsey refinery.

"We're here because we're fighting for our livelihoods," he says. 
"Everybody is worried about the future and about how they're going to 
support their families. How am I going to support my wife in these 
circumstances? We're all skilled workers and the fact that we have a 
company that has decided to pass over us British workers and bring in 
workers from Italy - in the current dire economic climate - just 
beggars belief. Something has to be done."

Somebody should give Mr Brassington a copy of The Times and tell him 
to his face that he is "economically illiterate". That should make 
some work for the chaps in the hi-viz yellow jackets. But it is quite 
obviously to the greater good that Italian workers, who clearly have 
cheaper wives, should come first. Mr Brassington should stop being so 
selfish.

The only thing is, I wonder what sort of piece The Times leader 
writer would go for if Mr Murdoch decided to fire all the newspaper's 
staff and hire in some cheaper foreign labour. Come to think of it, 
what would he say if we outsourced our government to a foreign 
country, like er . Belgium.

Woops, we've already done that. But the difference is we still pay 
the displaced workers. Now there's an idea for Mr Brassington. We get 
the foreigners to do the real work, pay ourselves inflation adjusted 
salaries and pensions and pretend we are still gainfully employed.

Or would that be "economically illiterate"
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Posted by Richard North