The one hundred and fifty fifth weekly "No shit, sherlock" award

This week's award goes to the Migration Advisory Committee, the government's official advisers on migration, for coming to the staggering conclusion that there is a link between immigration from outside the European Union and job losses among UK workers.
The MAC said there were 23 fewer UK jobs for every 100 migrants from outside the EU.

Immigration affects indigenous employment; "No shit, Sherlock"

Oh for f**k's sake

'The Equality Act will make it easier for staff to claim they were discriminated against because of a disability. This is because they no longer have to prove they were treated less favourably than non-disabled colleagues.

It is expected to lead to discrimination claims from dyslexic workers who have been barred from carrying out certain tasks because of their tendency to make spelling mistakes.'

Thanks to The Telegraph for spotting that particular piece of lunacy.

'Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

The new legislation means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child.

The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on Thursday that the Spanish law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

Fathers are currently only allowed to apply for breastfeeding leave if the mother is employed full time.

The Spanish man who challenged the law, Pedro Manuel Roca Alvarez, said his request to take breastfeeding leave from his job in Galicia was rejected because the mother of his child was self-employed.

The top court said such a refusal could have the effect of forcing self-employed mothers to limit their work because the father cannot share the burden.

Not giving dads the same right as mums in this case "is liable to ... keep men in a role subsidiary to that of women in relation to the exercise of their parental duties," the court ruled.

Breastfeeding leave should now be considered as "time purely devoted to the child" in order to reconcile family life and work after maternity leave.'

Thanks to The Telegraph for spotting another piece of lunacy. Call me old fashioned but I seem to think that only mothers can breastfeed, not fathers, and redefining breastfeeding as "time purely devoted to the child" discriminates against people who have no children but do have a kitten or puppy at home. Are pet owners being discriminated against? I have a new PC and I need to install various operating system updates in order to get it to maturity of use. Can I have time off at this difficult and vital time in my PC's development?

This is just crap, who would want to employ anyone now as the rules and regulations are so slanted in favour of the employee? So whilst we in the EU mollycoddle and play nicey nicey with our staff, more and more jobs are exported to India, China and elsewhere...

Just a question arising from the case of the Algerian street cleaners

We keep being told that, as a country, we need immigrants to do the work that the British are not trained to do. Really, is that really why Veolia Environment Services employ Algerian nationals as street cleaners? Are there really no British unemployed capable of cleaning the streets of London? Similarly are there really no British unemployed capable of issuing parking tickets in the City of Westminster, thus necessitating us importing 'skilled' labour from Africa? Why are we importing labour to do unskilled work whilst simultaneously paying Britons to be unemployed?

Job creation and the BBC lack of interest

The Telegraph report that:

'Nearly four out of five new jobs in Britain have gone to foreigners over the past three months, official figures show.

...

Labour market figures showed that 186,000 people started work – of which 145,000 were foreign and just 41,000 were British - in the three months to June 30.

The total number of foreigners in employment – 3.85million - is also at a record high, and amounts to one in seven of the workforce, according to the Office for National Statistics. '

The BBC seem not to have bothered to report this story; can you guess why?

More of Lord Myners comments in the House of Lords

From Hansard's report on yesterday's debate (my emphasis): 'The Government can create jobs but they cannot create the capacity sustainably to support those jobs if they are either imprudent in their fiscal policy or if the public sector begins to bear too heavily on the economy. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said, there is good work done in the public sector. We must ensure that during this period, when we face the need for fiscal adjustment, we do not denigrate those who work in the public sector.

We clearly need a policy of fiscal caution. It was right to support the economy during the global recession but there now needs to be fiscal adjustment, as evidenced by the last Government in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. There is nothing progressive about a Government who consistently spend more than they can raise in taxation, and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred by the current generation. There will need to be significant cuts in public expenditure, but there is considerable waste in public expenditure. I have seen that in my own experience as a government Minister. I hope that the Government will pursue with vigilance their search for waste and efficiencies without making cuts which are injurious to the provision of public service. The difference between the Government and the previous Government was on the issue of timing and when those cuts should take place.

There was flawed thinking about job creation in the past. I found it very frustrating to sit in meetings with some of my fellow Ministers talking about creating jobs in the green economy and biotechnology. The Government cannot create jobs. The Government can create an environment that is conducive to the creation of jobs, but they cannot create jobs and we mislead ourselves if we believe they can. We need to create a context for competition, incentives for capital investment, protection for intellectual property and promotion of high standards of governance. We also need high quality business inputs in infrastructure, human capital and physical infrastructure-a subject that I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, will speak to in a moment. We need predictable and business-sensitive administrative rules, and a technological infrastructure which promotes innovation.

The economies of the state are not the same as the economies of the business or the family. There is an important role for the Government in supporting economic activity. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made that very clear in a penetrating contribution to the Queen's Speech Debate last week. The economy is still operating at a rate in excess of 5 per cent below productive capacity.
Sensible words from an ex-Labour Minister, it's just a shame that he didn't have the guts to say the same to Gordon Brown when he was a Minister that man's failure of a government.

Public Sector employment

The BBC report that:

'Hugh Lanning, deputy general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, told the BBC: "It seems like a bit of a smoke screen to me, it's trying to paint the public sector as a problem but the debt wasn't caused by the public sector - it was caused by the banks and the financial crisis and we would like to see them share some of the pain, not just us."

He added that 100,000 civil service jobs had been cut in the past five years. "'

That's odd as the figures show that the Public Sector head count in Q1 1997 (just before Labour took office) was 5,197,000. In 2004 Q1 it was 5,773,000. In 2009 Q4 it was 6,098,000. So where is the 100,000 loss of jobs or was that the loss that was more than outweighed by the increase? Another statement accepted as fact by the ever supine to Labour and unions BBC.

Phil Woolas explains (update)

A few days back I blogged about Phil Woolas's appearance on the Daily Politics show and his 'explanation' of the immigration/new jobs figures. At the time I said that 'I am confused... ' Well it seems that Andrew Neil has decided to investigate Phil Woolas's claims further, do read the whole piece but here are a few extracts (my emphasis): '...I've now had a chance to study the transcript and to read the statistical explanatory note which goes with the ONS survey. Here are the facts:

...

2. It does not distinguish between immigrants and non-immigrants nor temporary or permanent workers. It simply establishes if you are working in Britain at the time of the snapshot and, among other things, asks if you are foreign or British born. This question -- and the definition of foreign-born -- is laid down by Eurostat, on whose behalf the Survey is down. Brussels controls the definitions and parameters so that it can make like-for-like comparisons across the EU.

3. Though, contrary to the minister's claims, the Survey does not distinguish between immigrant or temporary workers, its rules would tend not to count temporary foreign-born workers. The Statistical note explains: this Survey "is a Survey of private households and excludes people in communal establishments (eg hostels, students living in halls of residence) and people who have lived in the UK for less than six months. Arguably the excluded groups are likely to include disproportionately large numbers of migrants. It would be reasonable to infer from this that estimates of migrant/foreign worker numbers based on the LFS may be a little lower than they should be." (My italics)

4. Let's just pause to reflect what that means: temporary migrants tend to live in communal residencies and many might be here for less than six months. So the Survey is almost certainly an underestimate of the number of foreign-born workers in the British labour force at any one time.

5. Just to be clear, there is no double-counting: to return to the Minister's analogy, the Survey would not pick up the cumulative numbers at an Arsenal game over time -- just the crowd at the particular Arsenal game when the Survey was taken.

6. The number of foreign-born workers in the British labour force has doubled since 1997 (from 1.5m to 2.8m). It is true that foreign-born could apply to the offspring of expats whose children were born abroad, who are now of working age and who have returned to these shores. It even applies to Boris Johnson (who was born in America). But there is no evidence of a massive return of expats since 1997 (indeed the momentum has been the other way). Though the Survey is not directly concerned with immigration it is hard not to conclude that the huge rise of foreign-born in the labour force is directly related to the huge rise in immigration since 1997. If there's another explanation I'd be grateful for it.

Now there are many possible official responses to these figures. Ministers could argue that it is a good thing that foreign workers have come here to do jobs which British-born folk have shunned. They could also point out that there are hundreds of thousands of Brits working and living abroad and that national labour forces are a two-way street in the age of globalisation. What does not look credible is Mr Woolas's explanation on yesterday's show. It would appear to be factually wrong and doesn't stack up. He needs to explain why it was right -- or come up with another one. We'll be sending this note to him.'


Also PM on Thursday analysed the Gordon Brown/John Humphrys Today interview as well as the Phil Woolas one and decides that Gordon Brown was wrong, although if you include older workers then the percentage of net new jobs taken by foreign born workers is 'only' 72%. PM also take on Phil Woolas's football crowd claim and say that 'he is completely wrong'. So Phil Woolas will you come out and apologise for your 'misdirections'?

Phil Woolas 'explains'

Today's Daily Politics programme has Phil Woolas explaining to Andrew Neil that 98.5 per cent of the 1.67m new jobs for those of working age created since 1997 have not gone to foreign workers. I am confused...

More interesting is the second set of figures on foreign born workers in the private sector.

Nice try by Phil Woolas to try and make out that those making these claims are in some way racist. Just look at Kevin Maguire's face as he tries to not get involved in any way.

Labour's record on employment (part 2) - Labour became the government in 1992 or 1997?

Red Rag has spotted that a deceit is being perpetrated on the Labour Party's website where a graph shows "The percentage change in unemployment figures: for 2009 compared to 1992". Impressively every single region shows a reduction in unemployment and this is apparently "Because of the action Labour has taken."

"action Labour has taken."? Surely Labour were only elected in 1997. So 1992 - 1997 were under John Major's Conservative government.

Red Rag helpfully provide a graph that shows the decrease in unemployment under John Major (around 1 million), the decrease under Tony Blair (around 350,000) and the increase in unemployment under Gordon Brown (around 800,000), it also shows the increase in unemployment under the 1997-2009 Labour government of around 450,000. So Labour's boast of decreasing unemployment is actually due to the John Major government.




I presume that the Labour party will be correcting their claims and that the BBC will be all over this story... I also presume that pigs can fly!

Labour's record on employment (part1) - Half of new jobs are created by the state

The Times reports that:

"NEARLY three-fifths of the growth in jobs under Labour during a decade in power was directly or indirectly created by the state, new research shows.

Across the country as a whole, it says 57% of new jobs created during the period 1997-2007 were state or “para-state” — dependent on government spending .

In the West Midlands these jobs accounted for all of the rise in employment, with no new private sector jobs generated overall. More than 80% of new jobs for women nationally depended on the state.

The research, which was carried out at Manchester University’s Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, concludes that Britain’s business model before the financial crisis in 2007 was “undisclosed and unsustainable”.

“We more or less knew that finance had made a negligible contribution to employment,” said Professor Karel Williams, one of the report’s authors. “We were intellectually curious about the gap between the official figures on public sector employment and what we call the para-state.”

The researchers define para-state employment as activities such as rubbish collecting or nursery education which depend for revenue on government funding, together with parts of private healthcare and other sectors partly dependent on government support.

It includes consultants employed by central government and local authorities who are officially in the private sector but whose work would disappear if the public spending taps were turned off.

In all, the researchers calculate that of the 2.24m jobs created in Britain under new Labour until 2007, fewer than 1m were true private sector jobs, while 1.27m were in this wider public sector. In the West Midlands there was a net fall of nearly 37,000 in private sector jobs, offset by a 105,000 rise in state and para-state work. In the northeast, 79% of new jobs were state-dependent, compared with 41% in London and the southeast. "

This Labour government's record on increasing employment looks somewhat less than impressive when you realise that over half the jobs created were public sector (or similar) and a large proportion were filled by immigrants at the expense of British workers.

Fascinating BBC headline - "Tories continue welfare attacks"

"Tories continue welfare attacks" what does that mean to you? That the Conservatives are in some way attacking welfare payments or people on welfare? That's how it read to me, which is why I clicked on the article to see which Conservative politician was being misquoted now. The actual story starts:

"The Tories have stepped up their attack on Labour's employment record, accusing them of leaving people trapped in a "vicious cycle" of welfare dependency.

Shadow work secretary Theresa May said unemployment had become entrenched in many families with dire social effects.

Figures released on Wednesday showed the number of UK households with no-one working has risen to a 10-year high."

So a somewhat different story from that which the headline alludes to, I wonder why the headline was chosen...

The BBC then report the frankly incredible claim that

"Labour said the Tories' failure to help the unemployed in the 1980s had left a disastrous legacy."

Unemployment landslide on the way

Read this , digest it and worry - really worry.

Immigration and jobs

As many of us suspected:

"In the period Apr-Jun 97 there were 18.1m UK-born people working in the private sector. In Apr-Jun 07, it had actually fallen - to 18.0 million. So strip away immigration and state sector expansion and there are fewer British jobs, not more. The data for the respective period in 2008 is not out yet, but in the current environment it won’t be upwards."

"France, for example, saw immigrants as a share of its workforce slip from 11% to 10% between 1997 and 2006 according to figures which Eurostat sent me. The UK figures went from 7% to 11%. Others: Denmark (from 4% to 6%) Finland (2% to 3%) Sweden (6% to 13%)"

For more detail see The Spectator.

"British jobs for British workers"?

It appears that Gordon's proud boasts on record employment are a little exaggerated.

"The House of Commons Library compiled the data from the Government's Labour Force Survey for James Clappison, a Tory member of the Commons Home Affairs Committee...

In 2003, there were 24,473,000 British-born UK residents in recognised employment. In 2004, Britain granted unlimited access to workers from 10 new European Union states.

Employment registration data show that more than 600,000 new Europeans have found work here since.

During 2007, the number of British-born people in work was 23,948,000 - down 525,000."


Oh Gordon, today this is a story on an inside page of the Daily Telegraph - what if the News of the World were to go big on it tomorrow?