Been a busy morning for a little socialist evangelising on the Today programme. Earlier we had a charming item on the minimum wage postulating the theory that it has reduced in real terms over the past number of years because it has not always kept up with inflation. The focus of the interview was that the rate needs to increase and it was asserted that the advent of the minimum wage has had no impact on employment levels or other wage dynamics. There are plenty of economists who would dispute that this leftist political lever is not without negative consequences but they are conspicuous by their absence on Today. The listener is left with the impression that the minimum wage is unquestionably a good thing, it’s just we need to force employers to pay even more.
Then, we had an item on 70’s singer, Patti Smith. Never cared for her music myself, apart from her cover of Springsteen’s “Because the Night”. Anyway she was allowed to waffle on about the music industry but I smiled when she talked of the sheer horror of “working in a non-unionised factory” before she got her recording contract. How dreadful. If only the Unions could control everything what a benevolent world we would live in.
The messages are always subtle.
Best BBC quip for the week so far for me is “some observers say Gillard and the ALP heading for electoral defeat perhaps”… FYI, BBC- every poll, even the socialist ones, prove as given fact that the ALP (socialist regime in Australia) is going to be butchered like the communist pig it is.
The link between the minimum wage and the re-introduction of slavery to Britain…
The minimum wage means that for most menial work is £6.08ph. Any British employer must pay that wage as a minimum (age variations excepted).
So a cleaner would cost £231.04 pw, pre tax. Add in 13% employers NI and the yearly notional cost is £13.5k pa. That’s full time of course part-time costs are obviously less.
But if you hire a firm that is based outside of the UK to clean your premises they are the ones responsible for making sure the minimum wage is met and then, they only have to pay minimum wage if they are based withing the EU.
So an Estonian firm only has to pay something like 1.80EU per hour – a third of the cost.
So do you hire a British worker or an Estonian firm? Obvious really to any businessman.
The social cost is more immigration and fewer menial jobs for British workers.
And slavery? Well take cockle pickers from China. Hired because they are cheap and because at minimum wage labour prices the cockle market would collapse, Chinese gangs are used. They usually trick their ’employees’ into working for them with promises of Western wealth only to enslave them into working for subsistance and below.
So well done Labour. 200 years after slavery was abolished in the Empire you brought it back.
Hmm. A discussion on Today about how minimum wage is too low, and V Derbyshire discussing how minimum wage is too low. Different channels, different producers, different types of shows. Yet…
Agenda? What agenda?
Could do with a Craig to investigate the genesis of a few of these kite-flying stories…for the life of me, there is no rhyme or reason to these random bellows and quacks from the chatterati.
Possible causes
1. Partner all eggy in bed last night about a friends day bringing lattes to the under producer on Radio Wiltshire or the like.
2. Anecdote from the back of a researchers car, the money having already changed hands.
3. A spinning wheel of pinned up perennial gripes with Naughtie and a spare dart to throw,
Absolutely no purpose to it all-a mere excuse for cow eyes, wristbands and cheap grace…maybe the minimum wage looks so small when your own wad is so large…any thoughts from the Beeboid class I ask myself.