Admittedly it’s not the busiest time in the fields. There is a distinct nip in the air and we’ve battled through arguably the most unproductive 12 months in farming history, writes Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous.
But there are people queuing up to come in and lend their hand in British agriculture’s darkest hour. Just a shame that they’re not British.
Expansion of the EU results, somewhat inevitably, in a sea of workers willing to make their own way in our green and pleasant land. They come from far and wide. From Poland and Lithuania down to Albania and Romania. Each one determined to do whatever it takes to create a life less ordinary.
Amazingly, the reason why we need so many migrant workers is because our own, beloved unemployed think working in the fields is beneath them.
Get a load of that: people without a job thinking a job is beneath them. As if the mundanity of signing on is the physical peak of their week. Yet our benefit system has grown accustomed to rewarding those who think the sofa and the remote control are tools of the trade.
Why work when there are plenty of people working for you? Just what the 20-year-olds who roam the streets in their Burberry finest are doing all day is beyond me? Forging disabled badges perhaps? Looking for employment opportunities that require a jemmy and some agility? Faking a limp in case the investigators are on to them?
And why are they so reluctant to get off their tracksuits when others, often replete with degrees and higher level qualifications, are prepared to travel hundreds of miles in order to toil in the mud?
True, working the ground in Britain is the financial equivalent of mastering law in Albania, but surely the fact that these people are humble enough to do anything to progress puts our lazy society to shame.
But there could be trouble ahead. New reforms being pushed through European Parliament mean the number of immigrants looking to work in agriculture and horticulture will decline throughout next year. Indeed, unless the NFU and other lobby organisations get their way, the shortfall could be as much as 5,000 people.
So as many British farmers try to recover from their despicable year with a bumper harvest in 2008, they may well struggle to reap it.
Worse still, in the absence of hardworking Eastern Europeans they could be faced with surly Brits in their place.
In its recent paper to the European Parliamentary Committee, the Commission for Rural Economies said some UK businesses could not survive without migrant labour. More tellingly, they don’t reckon our “boys” could cut the mustard in an environment which required taking their hands out of their pockets and putting out a cigarette before stepping up to the plate.
Its report pointed out: “Migrants from Eastern Europe are noted for their willingness to work hard for relatively little reward.
“Many employers also consider that young people from the UK are often not adequately equipped or experienced to do even relatively low-skill-level work and may have an ‘attitude problem’.”
It was interesting to hear that David Cameron’s proposals for welfare reform included a caveat in which people could not turn down jobs unless there was a darn good reason.
But surely that’s obvious? Why should jobseekers be allowed to dismiss employment if we’re paying them to sit at home and watch pirate DVDs?
And if there is an employment shortfall why the hell can’t we send the cheats and the dodgers in that direction?
The masses continually harp on about how damaging our immigration policy is, but until we address the matters at home with this work-shy generation then I’d swap them for a Bulgarian any day.
13 Comments
The ultimate irony is that many of the migrant workers who come here to earn money (and they work hard to earn it!) are better educated than the feckless underclass we seem so content to nurture here.
For those that want employment but do not have it – and there are plenty of these – we shouldn’t tar all the unemployed with the same brush – the principal obstacle is not that the primary cash benefits are so attractive, but that the secondary benefits such as housing benefit, cheaper educational opportunities, cheaper health benefits, all disappear once you are in even quite low paid work, thus making people financially worse off than when they were claiming.
Of course, in work you have the benefits of working and improving your confidence and self-esteem – but that doesn’t pay the bills.
We need a shift in our benefit system to support the low-paid with a higher minumum wage and better peripheral support especially for families. If we do this, hopefully we won’t bring up another generation of kids whose only example is that of paid idleness.
Those that insist on continuing to avoid seeking work should have their benefit reduced to a bare subsistence level – preferably paid in tokens to be spent on a specific purpose rather than cash.
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This is not as simple as it seems.I was made redundant last year, and since then, have been trying to set up my own business and applying for full time employment. No advice or help from the job centre (what have you been doing to try and find work, oh, ok, see you in 2 weeks time), £57 a week does not pay the mortgage or bills! This was stopped after 6 months, good job I had some savings put aside. Having a relatively good CV, have applied for, on average, 4 jobs a week, most companies will not even eknowledge my applications. I have signed up with every agency in Shropshire (useless), applied for jobs from shelf stacker to mid range IT, all with no success. Yet I am repeatedly told that vacancies can’t be filled, so we need immigrants to fill them. The only solution, is for the job centre’s to pull their finger out, and have everyone’s CV on a database. They send the unemployed person for an interview, If that person doesn’t turn up, benefits are stopped, simple. The job centre would then be doing the job they are supposed to do, rather than outsourcing the whole thing to a bunch of absolutely useless agencies!
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Why can’t Nathan Rous see the real reason for “Our own, beloved unemployed” not wanting to work in fields?
Who in their right minds would want to risk dropping a £300 mobile phone in the dirt? -Who would want to walk through mud and get their £80 Reebok trainers dirty? – Who would be so stupid as to get a job that stops you getting on the lager at 1200?
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I wonder if Mr Rous would ever openly show the same contempt towards any group other than the British working-class?
This is the typical loathing that the ‘metro-elite’, the chattering classes et all, have for those who they regard as worthless ‘chavs’.
I only hope Mr Rous never has the misfortune of having his job ‘offshored’ to somewhere such as Eastern Europe or India – or his wages driven down due to the mass flow of cheaper migrant labour into the UK.
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I agree with Nelson this article lets Mr Rous down, the lazy brits or the “workshy generation” would happily take the jobs if they were economically viable, but they are not.
Migrant workers often live 7 or 8 to a house and return home for a sufficient amount of time so as to avoid paying tax, that is why they can afford to work for such a low wage.
How could a Briton with wife and children survive on a minimum wage?
The playing field is far from even.
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Nelson said:
“I wonder if Mr Rous would ever openly show the same contempt towards any group other than the British working-class?”
Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that what he says isn’t true. Nathan’s not talking about the working class, but the non-working one – the people who Nelson is presumably lucky enough not to live near, who don’t fear losing their job because they’ve never had one.
As for “worthless chavs”, if that’s what they are that’s what I’ll regard them as.
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Well there is one group of workers available for the ‘work that the British won’t do’ because they cannot usually live on the starvation wages.
Lets get the prison population out of cushy comfortable prison cells and let them work in the fields.
Do them good, instill the work ethic and by doing such they can help pay their keep and have some money for their release.
Lets get real shall we. Crime should not pay and cutting lettuces will do more to bring that point home to criminals than fancy gymnasiums and playing pool.
Elizabeth
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I thought in our “enlightened” society, stereotyping whole sections of society was frowned upon?
Apparently not it seems.
As others have pointed, people who peddle the line taken in this article never directly experience the life of which they write.
I work in the blue coller sector and I can tell Mr. Rous that he is talking bilge. Wages and conditions ARE being pushed down by immigrants.
When I was looking for a job a year ago I was astounded by the pitiful wages on offer. I have a wife, child and house to support and the absurd rate of pay for incredibly long hours was a disgrace.
Mr. Rous may be happy to have the UK workplace turn into some backward third world sweatshop to aid globalisation, but I prefer to continue the decent working conditions and practices in place that people in this country have fought for over the years.
There is no way you can compare the situation of the British worker with the immigrant worker. The immigrant worker, even on minimum wage, is in relative terms earning a fortune compared to what he was on in his homeland. The British worker, however, is still on minimum wage.
They work like dogs, share 9 to a flat, only have to provide for themselves, and save all their money which they send home.
Their whole ethos is to save a much money as possible in a shorter space of time as they can.
The British worker, however, has to try and make a life here, pay rent for his family, seeing as how he’s not living 9 to a dwelling, and plan for the long term.
I’d really like middle-class people like Mr. Rous to leave their ivory towers and try and live as one of the indigenous WORKING class in modern Britain.
Perhaps a good dose of real life away from their safety nets would stop him writing such false, insulting and patronising nonsense.
You simply cannot compare the situation
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I lived just outside evesham for 2 years , the apple farmers did not want british workers, they worked the migrant workers hard and to be honest the minimum wage was a joke it don’t exist in that community may do on paper but not in real life .
I no three farmers here in shropshire who employ eastern europeans and yes they are grafters they get a house with the job rent free the one of them i no is working as a cowman for minimum wage the nfu will tell you a cowman should not be getting the minimum wage but all three farmers have told me they pay all the workers minimum wage all do have a house with the job rent free , but as the farmers told me we work them 7 days if we need to sat/ and sun on min wage we couldnt get a brit to do that .i new a few retired british police officers who took jobs after they retired they thought they didnt need to actually work in the job they were being paid for as in there words they had done there bit, even though there employer was paying them a full time wage unemployed, early retired,long term sick there are lazy ones amongst them all , i use to work for £8 per hour until i saw the light went self employed etc now i do not work for less than £21 per hour , all brits have the yearning to earn more and not work for peanuts and be treated like a monkey
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Debt fuelled easy living has made our folk apathetic, but thanks to the financial intelect of Gordon Brown, the wake up call is just around the corner.
Don’t blame the migrants for coming to work, blame the treacherous politicians who allow it to happen.
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If the pompous Mr Rous’ own livelihood was under threat from a ‘cheap’ East European his arrogant dismissal of our own people might change.
When there is an even playing field Mr Rous, then you can compare the British with other nationalities.
Britain did not become Great Britain by having a poor work ethic, but since the last war the Liberal Establishment have turned the benefits system into a lifestyle choice and through the lefty teaching in our schools they have destroyed all pride in themselves and their country for several generations of our children.
None of the liblabcon axis will do anything to counter these fundamental problems – they are, after all, responsible for it. They prefer, as does Mr Rous by the look of it, to sit on their hands and shaking their heads, watching as we become a minority in our own country, swamped under the weight of mass immigration.
Time to give the fourth largest (and fastest growing) party a chance, methinks.
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To Michael C, I am an expat so please try to forgive me if I seem a out of touch, but which is the “fourth largest (and fastest growing) party”? I tried wikipedia (which granted is hardly an authorative reference)and it suggested the Democratic Unionist Party has the 4 largest number of seats in the Commons. If we go by number of votes in the last general election then that would make it the UK Independence Party, but by that measure the Lib Dems are the fastest growing.
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how cum if their is a racist attack on a white person its a tiny piece in the corner ov the paper. but if their is a racist attack on a black person its a main headline,thats racist to white people
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