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Well played, Madam Chair - I salute you for retaining your composure and displaying grace under fire.
I'd be no good in that situation - It'd be all flustered mumbling, pauses, lots of "Er...." and you didn't start a single sentence with that horrible "Well, you know....." device, first adopted by Tony Blair and subsequently flogged to death by politicians of all hues.
No, I don't know.....that's why I asked you the question, idiot!
Anyroad, I digress......back on topic:
Yes, controls on immigration are obviously a good idea but the notion that the country is full and all these horrible foreigners are coming over here to either (A) take all our jobs or (B) claim millions in benefits whilst sitting on their arses watching Sky TV all day is simply nonsense.
It's a myth propagated by UKIP which taps into (perfectly natural) fears that the indigenous population (whatever that means) may have about people and things they know little about.
In very simple terms, if you don't understand something it's easy to fall into the trap of fearing it and automatically viewing it as a bad thing.
And that's what UKIP are exploiting.
But, as I've said before on here, whilst the Kippers are a joke and will never be a credible force in UK politics, some good has come out of their rise in popularity:
Prior to the last election anybody who raised the issue of controlling immigration was seen as a de facto racist but at least now, thanks to Nige and his ilk, we can now all at least discuss the subject in the mainstream, without fear of the debate being stifled to death from the off because it was taboo.
In terms of "foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs and driving wages down", doing what I do for a living, I have been in literally dozens of manufacturing plants over the last twenty years and yes, I have seen a rise in the numbers of foreign workers in them.
But when you start to ask why, it very quickly becomes apparent that the reason we have so many eastern Europeans working in our factories is quite simply because the going rate for the job has always been around minimum wage level and English people won't get off their arses at five AM and go to work for that amount because they can claim more in benefits.
And can you honestly blame them for that?
The Poles aren't driving wages down but they are prepared to work 40+ hours a week for £240 and, in my experience at least, that's something that English people, in increasingly large numbers, simply aren't prepared to do.
Does anybody think that if all the Eastern Europeans suddenly upped sticks and went home, UK employers would be forced to start paying £15 an hour to English people to fill unskilled jobs?
Nonsense - it doesn't work like that.
The current situation is a bit of a mess in my view because you can't blame the English for not wanting to work for less than they can claim and you can't blame the migrants for filling the labour gap.
If you want to blame someone, blame successive Tory governments (starting with Thatcher) for eroding the collective bargaining power of the British workforce by destroying the unions and raising taxes to the point where British industry stopped being competitive and which resulted in our manufacturing base crumbling to the point where we hardly manufacture anything in this country any more because cheap foreign imports are better value and it's too expensive to manufacture alternatives here at home.
And on top of this, our economy relies more on the financial services / banking sector far more nowadays than it ever did previously, so all our eggs are in that basket and profits made from that money stay in the hands of an elite few and don't filter down into the economy at large, hence why we're all feeling the pinch.
Rant over.
(I only started this comment to say well done to Manda and look what happened.......Off for a lie down now.)
I'd be no good in that situation - It'd be all flustered mumbling, pauses, lots of "Er...." and you didn't start a single sentence with that horrible "Well, you know....." device, first adopted by Tony Blair and subsequently flogged to death by politicians of all hues.
No, I don't know.....that's why I asked you the question, idiot!
Anyroad, I digress......back on topic:
Yes, controls on immigration are obviously a good idea but the notion that the country is full and all these horrible foreigners are coming over here to either (A) take all our jobs or (B) claim millions in benefits whilst sitting on their arses watching Sky TV all day is simply nonsense.
It's a myth propagated by UKIP which taps into (perfectly natural) fears that the indigenous population (whatever that means) may have about people and things they know little about.
In very simple terms, if you don't understand something it's easy to fall into the trap of fearing it and automatically viewing it as a bad thing.
And that's what UKIP are exploiting.
But, as I've said before on here, whilst the Kippers are a joke and will never be a credible force in UK politics, some good has come out of their rise in popularity:
Prior to the last election anybody who raised the issue of controlling immigration was seen as a de facto racist but at least now, thanks to Nige and his ilk, we can now all at least discuss the subject in the mainstream, without fear of the debate being stifled to death from the off because it was taboo.
In terms of "foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs and driving wages down", doing what I do for a living, I have been in literally dozens of manufacturing plants over the last twenty years and yes, I have seen a rise in the numbers of foreign workers in them.
But when you start to ask why, it very quickly becomes apparent that the reason we have so many eastern Europeans working in our factories is quite simply because the going rate for the job has always been around minimum wage level and English people won't get off their arses at five AM and go to work for that amount because they can claim more in benefits.
And can you honestly blame them for that?
The Poles aren't driving wages down but they are prepared to work 40+ hours a week for £240 and, in my experience at least, that's something that English people, in increasingly large numbers, simply aren't prepared to do.
Does anybody think that if all the Eastern Europeans suddenly upped sticks and went home, UK employers would be forced to start paying £15 an hour to English people to fill unskilled jobs?
Nonsense - it doesn't work like that.
The current situation is a bit of a mess in my view because you can't blame the English for not wanting to work for less than they can claim and you can't blame the migrants for filling the labour gap.
If you want to blame someone, blame successive Tory governments (starting with Thatcher) for eroding the collective bargaining power of the British workforce by destroying the unions and raising taxes to the point where British industry stopped being competitive and which resulted in our manufacturing base crumbling to the point where we hardly manufacture anything in this country any more because cheap foreign imports are better value and it's too expensive to manufacture alternatives here at home.
And on top of this, our economy relies more on the financial services / banking sector far more nowadays than it ever did previously, so all our eggs are in that basket and profits made from that money stay in the hands of an elite few and don't filter down into the economy at large, hence why we're all feeling the pinch.
Rant over.
(I only started this comment to say well done to Manda and look what happened.......Off for a lie down now.)
