For years the BBC has been trying to pin the blame for low productivity on austerity, they kept on raising the subject and telling us how awfully awful this was and yet they just couldn’t find a reason for it…it was all a big puzzle….wilfully avoiding mentioning that mass immigration of cheap labour meant low wages and little research, development and investment in skills by Business.
However, glory be, the BBC has discovered the solution, the Puzzle is no more. Do I need to go on or have you guessed already? Yes that’s right kids, Brexit caused the Productivity Puzzle….never mind that Brexit was only in 2016….so no wonder the economists were puzzled in 2012…the future hadn’t caught up with the BBC’s alternate world of facts…
UK productivity puzzle baffles economists
It goes without saying that the BBC will not implicate their beloved immigration .But the government is totally to blame for allowing the flood of cheap Labour egged on by their business buddies.They are all as bad as each other .
The other issues are
The loss of tax due caused by low skill “cash in hand “ and people just not turning up in the books
The amount of Money being sent home to mama and removed from our economy . A lot of money transfer agencies where I live .
Businesses care about profit . They have no duty to a nation. Therefore it is in their interest to get cheap overseas labour irrespective of the effect on the country such as strained public services
The amount of Money being sent home to mama and removed from our economy . A lot of money transfer agencies where I live .
Absolutely spot on. I know someone who used to work for the Home Office who once told me I’d be gobsmacked by the amount of money leaving the country.
Yes, the truth will out… but its escape will be severely impeded by the BBC, which will do everything in its power to detain it.
BBC 6pm news today had an item on racial integration with the main focus on coloured groups complaining of lack of opportunities etc due to skin colour. The last segment was on the fact that white teenagers from poor backgrounds stand less chance of going to university than coloured teenagers. The reporter then interviews a young white male in a boxing gym somewhere in the SE. I do not think the reason for the lack of opportunity for whites was discussed and I took the sublime message from this as young white males are only good for fighting. A typical one sided, slanted viewpoint which one expects from the Beeb.
And not to forget wages.
Wage growth in the UK has stagnated, for the same reasons – at least that’s what the BBC will have you believe. Austerity, uncertainty, Brexit have all taken their toll on the on the wages of working men and women….except for the fact that wage growth stalled and went into reverse in 2004 – it must have been something to do with Cameron…or the Tories…or Thatcher. I cant think for the life of me who was the PM then, or the Chancellor, or what decisions were made around then to open the doors and flood Britain with cheap labour.
Not so much rubbing the right’s noses in it, as Andrew Neather reported Labour’s objective to be. Brown and Blair rubbed the people of Britain’s noses in their dogma and they paid the price over and over again.
Quite right, alan, it was a puzzle for Steffie Flanders for much of the time she was Economics Editor. I wonder if our Witchfinder General will be along to check on that fact oh, and to also apologise to you for you having called Altrincham right and maxi getting it wrong. maxi, where are you?
I think Steffie, toward the end of her time, did suggest it might be due to a rapidly expanding workforce with unemployment falling fast but still absorbing massive inward migration. The new workers being less productive while working their way into their new employment.
If I recall correctly Pesto, on the other hand, suggested we all had become less productive because of the intrusion end of new technology coupled to social media. Or did Steffie suggest that, too?
Come on maxi, as Witchfinder General you must know.
What a shame that BBC website visitors can no longer debate the weighty matters of economics, business and politics with the Senior Editors on their Blogs. Even maxi will not debate with us.
I’m surprised that maxi won’t debate. I’ve always thought of him as a mass debater.
“I’m surprised that maxi won’t debate. I’ve always thought of him as a mass debater.”
Haha yes I suspect Marxistcony enjoys mass-debating very frequently!
How does productivity in the public sector (which includes the BBC) compare to the private sector?
Well, a public sector ‘Chief Executive’ gets £250,000 for doing feck all, while a private sector gets the same for relentless hard graft and a heart attack into the bargain.
In Kent, our Highways ‘Chief’ gets a hundred grand, even though he’s only a temp, and his expertise is ‘waste management’. You couldn’t make it up, unless you work for KCC, when anything goes.
The BBC apparently get £1,170,000,000 from flogging DVDs, books and progs, and that’s on top of the TV tax which amounts to £3,800,000,000.
If that fat-faced BBC ‘business’ was run by proper exporters, it’d cover the whole shebang on its own, without resorting to sending pensioners to prison.
Kent Council has form. One of the worst examples was the Chief Executive Katherine Kerswell in 2012. She was paid £420,000 redundancy after working only 16 months. This was on top of the £140,000 salary. They justified the redundancy by stating that the role no longer existed. Instead they changed the title of the chief executive to Head of paid service and hired someone else on £200k p.a.
Absolute disgrace was all that Richard! She got away with it of course, and is probably doing the same somewhere else.
It’s one of the oldest scams in the book with LAs. They move every two years, then just shift off to a higher paid non-job.
Just look at the grossly inflated money the whole senior bunch get, it’s all online, and weep. I was going to try and cut and paste it all here, but felt so sick reading the names, especially one individual whom I know is an absolute waste of breathing space and a total tosser to boot.
One has to assume that the BBC follows similar guidelines, although their ‘consultants’ and others are well hidden, as they behave the same with £3,800,000,000 of taxpayer’s money. They all understand the game.
Excellent analysis Alan. There is no productivity puzzle. Labour is cheap and plentiful, buoyed by immigration. Businesses employ people rather than automate. Productivity measured as production per person stays low, employment stays high. That’s been the UK way. Not a puzzle at all.
If you want to see an alternative approach look at Japan.
Flex,
Exactly so.
Productivity is more a minor problem in the country’s economy .
Minor problem ?!
Well the major problems in the economy are has everyone got a job , is the infrastructure up to the standard required , are the hospitals ok , can people retire in comfort without worry , are the schools ok , is the country not in debt , are the armed forces up to strength and capable for any and every task , do people feel they pay fair taxes and the money is well spent , can the police effectively reduce crime , does the government have reserves of cash for emergencies .
If the most important item about the economy is productivity , and we are low on it , then the government should treat it seriously , draw its horns in and
Stop aid to other countries
Stop immigration
Deport undesirables .
Since the very begining of when those in the 1950’s began to construct a European Union, the one aim was to destroy the soverignty of every country in Europe thereby being able to control each nation as to its policies as well as opening the door for mass immigration from wherever, and as we are informed long before the current waves of immigration from Africa/Middle East/Indain Sub Continent it was concluded that the EU could not be reformed. Over the last 45 years the EU has been the ptomoter of crime and instability which has weakened Europe’s cultural and physical defences. Those that control the EU as well as those that control the money, became very aware of what this meant and so brought about through massive propaganda the wonderful creation of ‘Multiculturalism’- and so chaps we have a Europe rocked by deadly Islamic terror attacks on a regular basis, more extremist attacks being sent against us every weekbut still the EU want to continue Muslim immigration even though as studies show integration is not happening-perhaps just as well. EU policies have long constituted a direct threat to our lives-for goodness sake let’s get out and away from what will soon be a dismantled mess as the EU crumbles. Patriotism is what we need now.
Since the very begining of when those in the 1950’s began to construct a European Union, the one aim was to destroy the soverignty of every country in Europe thereby opening the door for mass immigration from wherever, and as we are informed long before the current waves of immigration from Africa/Middle East/Indain Sub Continent it was concluded that the EU could not be reformed. Over the last 45 years the EU has been the ptomoter of crime and instability which has weakened Europe’s cultural and physical defences. Those that control the EU as well as those that control the money, became very aware of what this meant and so brought about through massive propaganda the wonderful creation of ‘Multiculturalism’- and so chaps we have a Europe rocked by deadly Islamic terror attacks on a regular basis, more extremist attacks being sent against us every weekbut still the EU want to continue Muslim immigration even though as studies show integration is not happening-perhaps just as well. EU policies have long constituted a direct threat to our lives-for goodness sake let’s get out and away from what will soon be a dismantled mess as the EU crumbles. Patriotism is what we need now.
Not coincidentally, this is pretty much the same argument as has been going on in the United States and Germany. Regarding Germany, this article
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11100/germany-islamic-sunset
covers things pretty (alarmingly) well.
In the US, there is a blatant attempt by Democrats to flood the country with immigrants, always, although not always rightly, assumed to be Democratic voters. Establishment Republicans are bizarrely on board with this, since the big businesses that fund their election campaigns are all in favour of cheap labour, whether that means bargain basement immigrants, or ever more outsourcing to Asia. IBM now employs more people in India than in America.
As the Gatestone article points out, however, trying to fix either demographic or economic problems with mass immigration is delusional. Immigrants grow old, too, and, if they are unemployable, they grow old unemployed.
R4 Discussion on data sets released The Race Disparity Audit …Whilst overall a fair discussion the BBC did allow one presenter to make a point – her only real one – – that people on the RIGHT would use this to prove that there isn’t a racist issue…..So only the RIGHT….of course the LEFT wouldn’t do that would they? One contributor when asked admitted she hadn’t looked at the report….that’s a useful contributor..
All in all a pointless discussion…..as none of them had really looked at the figures apart from the ones already thrown out in the press…Well done BBC
On bBBC 1 6pm news
1. Fiona Bruce announces the low productivity numbers, SHAKING HER HEAD as she does so.
We don’t want your opinions dear.
2. Then Kamal Hamid talks about ‘Public Sector Austerity’ . Any thoughts for the 80% which is the private sector?
The bias is so entrenched I sometimes wonder whether they are even aware.