UKIP poster boy is a racist immigrant, film at 11

[Josquius]

The well reported trend is for eastern europeans to go home after a few years in Britain. Not many settle.

[Agelastus]

Someone please explain this fetish with manufacturing that so many people have? As if the value of a good is somehow conceptually different to the value of a service? Only in Britain do people actually want to destro- sorry, "rebalance" away from the most productive sector of the economy.

Presumably, this would require reviving the UK's glorious history of state planning and industrial policy which led to the remarkable economic successes of the twentieth-century.

By the way, the UK has a lot of high-value manufacturing that is considered world-leading. Unfortunately, it's mostly in the Midlands and the south.

I think the issue may revolve around the balance of payments deficit; there's a lot of people still alive who can remember when a balance of payments deficit was considered a catastrophe (ie. were alive before the mid-Eighties or so.) And also remember that when Britain had a larger manufacturing base we had a more favourable balance of payments. So they want to revert to that situation thinking it will improve things despite the fact that the world economy has moved on.

Plus, of course, lingering memories of when the north was a manufacturing powerhouse.

Oh, and that manufacturing used to provide mass employment. That's probably why both parties basically have the same language on the issue at the moment.

Despite what I've said above I'd personally like to see a degree of revival in this country's manufacturing base. It's not as if the international demand for services is not volatile in its own right and the more mixed the economy is the better it ought to be able to weather shocks. Still, I don't fetishise it like so many people do; if it can't be increased absent massive government intervention then it's not a catastrophe.

[The Brain]

More immigrants to the UK should be of a Germanic master race. If it ain't broke...

[Agelastus]

The well reported trend is for eastern europeans to go home after a few years in Britain. Not many settle.

Can you provide the links to the figures that support that; I thought the trend was more even than that (ie. half stay, half go.)

[The Brain]

Should they stay or should they go?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I, for one, welcome the dilution of national identities, if they will be replaced by a common European identity

that's just nationalism on another level.

[Eddie Teach]

Should they stay or should they go?

If they stay, it will be trouble.

[Martinus]

Should they stay or should they go?

If they stay, it will be trouble.

If they go it will be double.

[Agelastus]

OK, read the report now...

Still digesting it...

One, somewhat irreverent, thought is that the writers seem to have an issue with the year 2000. "Recent immigrants (defined as post 1999 arrivals) who arrived in the period 2001-2011" being the rough phrase used in the conclusion. I'm sure the year exists in the figures if not in the text!

The other thing is something that hasn't been mentioned, an interesting trend in total employment between 2007-11. The number of British natives in employment drops by 700000 (approx) while the number of immigrants in employment rises by 520000 (approx.) Does this represent a bias in recruitment in favour of immigrants or is it simply a function of the continued influx (roughly 1.2 million from all sources in those years) compared to the relative stagnation of the native population.

[Martinus]

If that is any consolation pretty much every government Poland had since 2005 had "making the emigrants to come back" as one of their chief slogans.

[Sheilbh]

I've enjoyed the Mail's splash tomorrow:

[sbr]

 

[Ed Anger]

300 Hungarian women.

[Agelastus]

They build the factory in Northampton, yet thirty miles away in Corby a food factory going through difficulties recently shut down - no doubt including workers willing to make sandwiches.

Typical.

[Admiral Yi]

Has that happened quite a few times?