The BBC has spent the last 7 years chuntering on about the ‘productivity puzzle’…it just couldn’t work out why British firms were so unproductive despite the answer being fairly obvious as employment zoomed on ever upwards and wages stagnated. The BBC’s attack on productivity was of course part of its campaign against austerity which it wanted to blame for what it saw as economic sloth.
so what is the basic reason for lack of productivity? Mass immigration of cheap labour into Britain that meant firms didn’t ave to invest in upskilling their workfore or in new technology. Newsnight admits this…but manages to avoid the word immigration throughout a 5 minute interview…
Wages could be higher, productivity could be higher…and of course, unsaid, queues for housing, the NHS, schools and services could be much shorter….if we didn’t have so much immigration….
For an organisation gifted nigh on £3700 million of taxpayers hard earned to do as they wilt with the whole notion of productivity must be something of a mystery, for example, lets award Capita a contract worth £560m in return for savings of £220m.(on target?) For a corporation with a bent for the progressive they remain unwaveringly traditional as regards a totally outdated and regressive mode of funding.
Capita’ s and the Beebs productivity in extracting money out of me isn’t just low it’s in the negative .