I would ask him the following:
London really needs to do something about this epidemic of walking past people
We should definitely make public policy decisions based on how reform supporters feel about things that might have happened, but didn’t. That’s so much better than evidence or data.
If true I find it very hard to believe that you know who didn’t have an inkling…was he buying jewellery and cosmetics for his own use?
Oh so now he’s shunning Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson?
The bloke looked “violent” because he recognised Zahawi. I’d look violent if I came across this grifting lying asshole!
First step - ban people working from home.
That’ll help.
Did he think they were a HMRC inspector?
FIFY.
Also, “First Step” is a great pun if intended 
.
The working from home thing is classic Reform/Farage - dividing people and creating envy.
There are some jobs that can be done very well from home. And some that can’t be. Reform want people who can’t work from home thinking why should these bastards stay at home all day? If I have to go out to work, so should they.
Some people are better and more productive working from home.
Others like me need a more structured environment.
My daughter works very well from home.
People who have a definitive view on this are at best idiots.
Many start ups rely on their few employees working from home. It’s just becomes another form of control.
I was just reading this article in the Guardian about the piss poor state of the construction industry in the UK:
I thought it was interesting that they compared it unfavourably with Germany. Having experienced both systems I think it is a little rose-tinted as there is a shortage of skilled tradesmen in Germany as well. But the one thing that you do find is that when a job is done it stays done.
When I had building work done in the UK it was always a bit of a nightmare. It would be a struggle to get the appropriate tradesmen in at the same time, and many had a lackadaisical attitude to work as well as shockingly shoddy workmanship. In one case, I had to do the electrical work myself after one “electrician” left wiring in a dangerous state and nearly killed my plasterer.
This was around the early 2000s, and what i did notice is that the best workmen were all guys in their late 50s and 60s. Essentially, there had been a dearth of apprenticeships since the early 1980s. When there was an influx of Polish and other Eastern European tradesmen during the the later 2000s, you suddenly found that there were young, fully experienced guys doing construction.
I think this is a longstanding problem with the UK. Tradesmen have always been viewed as being very lower class. My mother said that when she started training in library work in the 1950s, the senior librarians tended to look down on her as her father was a builder. (I think this also taints her view of Wirral people being ignorant snobs!)
Where does this hit the politics? Well successive governments have had targets to build new houses, and they nearly always fail. The problem is that they never consider who is going to do the work, and more often than not they choose policies that makes matters worse: not funding apprenticeships, cutting funding for training, encouraging kids with a talent for a trade to study for a degree instead, telling skilled tradespeople from the EU to fuck off.
I think at the route of this is that skilled tradespeople are simply not valued. The result is crap housing that costs far too much, and knock on effects that slowly strangle the rest of the economy.
How to fix it, though? You would have to start at schools and find a way of encouraging kids rather than treating them as an exams meat-grinder. The problem with that is that it will take a good 10 years to show results. Any politician knows that anything longer than 5 years is a thankless task.
That is why I punch every person in the head before I walk past them.
#DoingMyBitForLondon
There are definitely jobs that can be done very well from home. I can’t comment on Reforms intentions because I don’t know, so my comment is purely an uneducated opinion.
I could understand a Government wanting people to work from an office. People are more likely to spend money on travel, food, drink, etc. If people work from home there is less chance of impulse buying. This could be counter balanced potentially by productivity - so time lost travelling, etc.
Trust me, Amazon exists at home!
I work from home roughly 70% of the time. Sometimes you have to have physical presence to test equipment, but for most of the time I am working with remote data centres that aren’t even located at our office. As my boss says, it’s far better to have people staying fresh by having an extra hour in bed rather than tiring themselves out driving on the Autobahn.
For the wider economy, losses to inner city office rentals are offset by what were dormitory towns becoming functional centres in their own right. Generally, the most productive way of working isn’t determined by the landlord class.
Just checking if you posted the correct link, as I could not find the points you referenced.
I am a Site Manager and work in Construction, so I have experience of the industry and also have my frustrations, all be it purely from a UK perspective. @Noo_Noo is probably better placed to provide an opinion from a Contractual point of view.
Regarding house building and its targets, you may aswell just dismiss what they say straight away. There is not enough tradesmen or materials to deliver, also bureaucracy is ridiculous at times.
As you rightly touched upon, one of the problems (speaking from my generation) is that Curriculum is focused on more academic subjects. Not one teacher encouraged me or made me aware of the potential of having a career in a trade.
Schools are judged on exam results in the main subjects, so there is little encouragement to promote a trade.
Also, a tongue in cheek comment in relation to another thread, if you don’t get a degree/higher qualification you are stupid and more likely to have RW tendencies….
I cannot comment on whether we are telling skilled tradespeople from EU to fuck off because I don’t know. From my own experience, it doesn’t matter what nationality you are, they are equally good or bad. I have had some cracking Eastern Europe gangs, where their work has been bang on and then others who have been a liability, unless you skill test them at border control how do you know?
It is definitely an industry that has been neglected in terms of importance and something that should be addressed. There are so many children who are more hands on than academic and sadly we are slow to give them this opportunity.
Odd. I’ve corrected it. It seemed to have the wrong link in the app. I just cleared the cache and it works. This is the link:
It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Brexit, but I have come across a surprising number of people (particularly Poles and Czechs) who had been living in the UK and left as they felt hostility. My wife is in the same boat. She works as a nurse and felt that there was no effort to make her welcome.
That was entirely the experience of my eldest son who finished school in Scotland. He said that the school either wanted to ship them off to university or get them out of the door ASAP after their 15th birthday.
He was quite surprised at the work experience that our younger children have had in Germany, where they get to try out things like brick laying or catering.
What i do see is that there are defined pathways for trades and support in place for it.
I took it as a loose comment.
I am sorry to hear about your wife’s experience. That must not of been nice.
I genuinely haven’t witnessed that. I remember we had a gang of Ukrainian Dry liners and they struggled at first to understand that the British taking the piss out of each other was without malice and more a sign of friendship.