I believe this was it...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/12/unemployed-immigrants-jobs-documentary
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/12/unemployed-immigrants-jobs-documentary
It is obviously massively invading her privacy, but is anyone really surprised by the coverage? In Britain we're weirdly prudish about this stuff, while also loving the written by a 14 year old sex-starved boy, thigh-rubbing tone of the coverage.
That's an old link! It was ages ago tbf- quite possibly that, although I had Channel 4 in my head, not BBC.
MP Lee Anderson actually campaigned on nuisance tenants being kicked out of council homes forced to live in tents and pick potatoes - and that was before CV-19!
In Ireland there was a strawberry farm looking for workers a couple of weeks ago and had to hire Romanians i think. They hired a few Irish but not enough.
Paying decent wages has always been the antidote to filling vacancies in a range of so called ....'jobs that brits won't do'
I would have thought the waiter jobs would not be so bad. The picking fruit would be boring i assume.
Isn't it convenient how governments have the legend of the lazy, choosy British worker to fall back on?
It's boring, but can also be knackering, involving loads of bending down, depending on the fruit. I had a student job picking and tending to cucumber plants in a giant greenhouse and it was a baking hot summer. Was shite and loads dropped out, but was still money.
Yea i was thinking that alright. Any farm work is tough work. It could be roasting hot or raining, both of which would be tough to work in.
I worked in a computer factory years ago. I remember one of the jobs you had to do was pull wires out of all the laptops they were testing. You would think it was easy, but far from it. You were bending up and down literally 5000 times per 12 hour shifts. It was tough and it was boring. Like you loads of people would start and drop out two days later. I stuck by it to pay for my college. But if you kept it up, 12 hour shifts six days a week, you would be dead by the time you were sixty.
Some jobs like anything on the buildings or farms is serious tough work.
I really can't make sense of russians figures. Why would their daily cases double in the last 10 days, allegedly they have been testing people at a high rate since February/March, they tightened their borders and have lockdowns in place. Are their recent stats due to a delay between tests and results or are they seeing fresh cases?
Too late with enforcing lockdowns, also those lockdowns are fairly loose. Moreover, some of the so called "healthcare professionals" were all over TV saying that this virus is quite similar to seasonal flu. Unfeckingbelievable.
Thanks, you are in Russia? Looking at official figures Moscow and its regions are at 100k cases and an increase of 5k per day which is worrying, do you think that they are following New York?
Highly suitable for the furloughed then, two and half k a month ain't bad.
People that that social media, internet etc would make people more enlightened due to the readily available information. It turns out that the opposite is true... And I fear for the generation currently growing up in this hyperbolic and all-encompassing social media world. Some (few) will be able to handle it and be able to discern what is right and wrong, but most will be naive, easily manipulated and shallow people without any ability to reflect, evaluate and make up their own opinion. When this group of people start reproducing, will their kids become independent due to lack of parenting or will they be the same as their parents?
Yep. Tbf though, while plenty of students etc dropped out, there was a hardcore group of permanent staff who'd been there years and genuinely put a shift in day and day out. They'd even have races .
He said whoever he replied to lives in the US for what its worth
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Yea during lunch time you would look around the canteen and see loads of people with their hands in their faces.
TBH if it were an eight hour day you would put up with it. Pay was decent. Boring yes. But the 12 hour shift with every second week being the night shift was just soul destroying. It was basically work sleep work sleep.
I actually missed the semi final match against Barca when scholes scored the cracker because i was working in the factory.
British Growers Association.
BGA chief executive Jack Ward said he expected the ‘vast majority’ of seasonal workers this year will be British but that businesses cannot run ‘on enthusiasm alone’.
He said: ‘When you’re operating on the scale (that large food producers) are, you do need a few people around who know what they’re doing. ‘You just can’t run these businesses on enthusiasm alone.’ He said that, historically, a ‘significant proportion’ of pickers come from Eastern Europe and return year after year. ‘I think what that workforce provides is a bit of experience and know-how to mix in this year with the people who have never done this before,’ he said.
He added that crops are harvested 12 months of the year and the height of the season is from May to autumn. He said coronavirus restrictions could lift before the end of the season. ‘What we’ve got to be a little bit aware of is that when we get to, let’s say, July and we’re still absolutely flat out in the fresh produce industry, how many of the people who have volunteered have then returned to their original jobs,’ said Mr Ward. ‘I think what some farms are trying to do is balance what’s available today, what might be available in three months’ time or four months’ time, and the requirements of what is quite a long season. ‘I think they’re trying to cover every eventuality but I sense that this year the vast majority of seasonal workers will be from the UK. ‘The numbers you can get on a plane are almost insignificant compared with the total numbers that are needed.’ He said there had been a ‘terrific response’ to a campaign to recruit more British workers this year. ‘If anything we’ve been overwhelmed with offers of help,’ he said. ‘It’s been an amazing response.’ He said the asparagus season, which requires around 5,000 pickers across the UK, is just getting under way.
It is always easier to propagate the anti Brexit/Lazy Brit trope than look at the real picture including the difficulties in suddenly transferring 10'000's of workers and the inertia inherent within different employment sectors.
Not now, left Moscow mid-Feb. Looks like they are following New York. Huge city, tube has always been packed, people are not really disciplined. I am not even sure if Moscow has peaked yet.
Deaths are worryingly up today in Italy, with about two-thirds of the deaths being in Lombardia. New cases also up. We only eased the lockdown 2 days ago so it's too soon for that to be the reason, but I suspect people were moving around more in anticipation of the May 4th easing.
I believe Conte has said that they will re-impose the lockdown on a regional basis if things get bad again.
I believe Conte has said that they will re-impose the lockdown on a regional basis if things get bad again.
Who would have thunk it?Almost as if an early lockdown works
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
413 hospital deaths
The problem with a lot of the fruit picking jobs in the UK is that the farmers only allow workers that will live on site permanently through the season in static caravans, about 4 to a Van. They then deduct board from the workers wages leaving them with little take home pay. It works for Eastern European’s because the cost of living is so much lower in their home countries. It’s farmers gaming FoM.
A lot of Brits rejected those farm jobs this summer because they were not allowed to travel to site independently to avoid have their wages halved or whatever through the board.
Before FoM housewives from local towns used to pick the fruit, they were collected daily by a coach in the nearest towns etc.
All this means that the price of Strawberries has barely risen for a long time.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
The hotrail they put me there for a week nearly went off my game, some stations in computer factorys are a joke constant going for 12 hours I remember one station where it was constant going 12 hours and it was the long week so 6 12s in 7 days It took 2 days for my feet to get back to normal.
Yup, when someone mentioned Boston I look at it closely and the reality seems to be that british farmers bypass british prospective workers, partially for the reasons that you mentioned, they literally import workers from eastern Europe and fill their job vacancies in advance and on their particular terms. I also seem to remember that they do the same thing with north africans and spanish workers, a large sea food company comes to mind.
I’ve also heard people claim they only pay what equates to minimum wage in the workers home countries after boarding but that enables them to claim a number of tax breaks etc so the taxpayer ends up subsidising the workers/farmers too.
Not seen that from any proper source and I don’t know how the benefits system works but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Yea the hours were terrible. Where i worked every second week was night shift as well.
People were so tired that they were crashing their cars when they went home.
Good pay but shitty hours.
The sun was awful, but they surely got a legal department that made sure they won't get sued, and even if they got sued they'll win on the basis of "enter loophole here"
While I understand the need for widescale government intervention into all of our lives due to the current situation, I am quite concerned about how this could pan out.
We all need to be very careful that it is exclusively associated with the fight against Corona Virus.
Full stop.
The fear is that once the government and police get used to being able to gain access to and control us with much of the data we use in our private lives, will they be prepared to stop.
Should we trust them???
Do I trust them; definitely not.
Vic Reeves reference?
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
I agree. They have a room full of lawyers analysing these things.
But if it were a woman, as in they said "woman caught with her knickers down." You can bet your bollix they would be in trouble.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Ed Yong knocking it out of the park again.
Concerning for UK is the amount of cases, (6k today not on the graph) is how we're in this 4.5-6.5k range. You can say increased testing but Italy increased there's massively as well, as did Spain, Italy more so in fact and saw it down to 2-3k consistently by this time. While deaths are past the peak I fear they will keep kind of medium to high as these 5-6k cases per day unfold in the next month.
I don’t think people appreciate how rigorous the lockdown has been in Italy and Spain. Kids not allowed out of their apartment under any circumstances for several weeks. Hefty fines regularly issued to anyone leaving their home without official documentation.Concerning for UK is the amount of cases, (6k today not on the graph) is how we're in this 4.5-6.5k range. You can say increased testing but Italy increased there's massively as well, as did Spain, Italy more so in fact and saw it down to 2-3k consistently by this time. While deaths are past the peak I fear they will keep kind of medium to high as these 5-6k cases per day unfold in the next month.
The Uk approach is a walk in the park (literally!) by comparison. So you would expect the UK “tail” to be much longer and taller than those two countries.
In Spain if you went to the shops you had to keep your receipt in case the police stopped you asking why you were out.
In Ireland, granted its a much smaller population and only Dublin is really dense, the infections are down to 250-ish. They are sort of easing things now, but a second wave is a certainty then.
Oh yeah, I'm aware of how strict the lockdown is in Italy and Spain, I should've mentioned that like I've done in the past.
France is interesting though, UK and France both lockdown at 330-340 deaths, both had very low rates of testing throughout, both talked about 25k per day and took a very similar amount of time to really get there but France have seen a pretty quick fall. France had some earlier measures mind, not sure how strict the lockdown was and maybe UK outbreak is spread out more in a land size much smaller. London only is 20-25% of the cases when I've looked in the past, other countries might be more concentrated, Madrid was 50% for a long time.