Train brickies or we will never stop hiring migrants
TORY titan Michael Gove says high levels of UK migration put a strain on demand for housing.
Well — duh! Whose fault might that be, Michael?
After being in power for 13 years, and after five Tory Prime Ministers of all shapes and sizes, nobody could say the Conservatives haven’t had every opportunity to reshape the country in their image.
Yet next week official figures for net migration will be released and are certain to be an eye-watering record high — possibly not much under the ONE MILLION mark.
The Government’s housing target — that euphemism for a meaningless, empty promise — is to build 300,000 homes a year.
And guess what? It is not currently meeting that target.
The target itself is built on the assumption that net migration — the difference between the number of people leaving and arriving in the UK — is around 170,000 a year.
The figure some experts predict for next week is 997,000 — more than double the pre-Brexit record.
And these people are not getting out of leaky dinghies.
“Britain has always been a country that has benefited from people of talent arriving here and people fleeing persecution,” Gove told this week’s National Conservatism UK conference in London.
“But the numbers recently have been at a level where there is an inevitable pressure on housing and public services.”
Oh, Govey, baby — whose fault is that?
These Tories are so totally, spectacularly removed from real life that it never even crosses their Oxbridge-educated minds that we desperately need to boost apprenticeships to reduce the need to import workers.
The small boats have attained a symbolic significance. Can Rishi stop them, or not?
But next week’s statistics for LEGAL migration should be an infinitely bigger deal in the public consciousness.
It is of far greater significance to our national life that skilled workers come here legally to do the jobs we are too clueless to do ourselves.
Immigration is a good thing when the newcomer brings something to our workforce that is missing.
But everyone who arrives needs somewhere to live, health care for themselves and their family, education for their children.
It is bonkers for the Government to be relaxing migration rules for skilled craftsmen when our own people should possess these skills.
And out-of-touch Tories like Michael Gove give no sign that they understand the fundamental reason for the astonishing levels of immigration.
The UK has a training deficit.
Our own youngsters are not being coached for the skilled work that would give them a job for life.
Building bosses say that there are just 70,000 working bricklayers in the country — an astonishing figure in a country of 67million.
Demand for brickies is off the charts.
Some are earning more than £125,000 a year, placing them in the top tax bracket.
Think about it — brickies paying the same rate of tax as Premier League footballers.
Donald Duck degrees
Downing Street is relaxing visa rules for foreign builders.
They have no choice or else there will be nobody to build all these new homes they keep promising.
But why can’t we train young Brits to be bricklayers — and electricians, plumbers, plasterers, carpenters and roofers?
Since the Tony Blair years the emphasis has been on packing every youngster off to university as though it is Glastonbury so they can accumulate £27,000+ of debt and some Minnie Mouse degree that is worthless in the working world.
Would things only get better under Sir Softie?
No — Donald Duck university degrees for all is a Labour invention.
There has been a lot of debate in recent days about Brexit and if it has succeeded or failed.
But if we can’t train our youngsters to be carpenters, brickies, roofers, electricians, plasterers and plumbers, then it doesn’t matter a damn if we are inside or outside the European Union.
We will always need to import skilled workers from foreign shores.
Even when they number one million every year.
Titanic is plain to sea
THE Titanic continues to grip our collective consciousness.
For the first time the most famous shipwreck in history has been subjected to a full-sized digital scan, created by the latest tech in deep-sea mapping.
In the past, submers-ibles with low-resolution cameras revealed only tiny glimpses of the Titanic, which lies 3,800 metres down in the Atlantic.
But the 700,000 images taken by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, reveal the wreck in its entirety for the first time.
The 3D reconstruction is so precise you can see unopened bottles of champagne and the shoes of the dead.
Titanic will never be raised – after resting on the sea bed since 1912, it would fall apart.
In time, it will disappear entirely.
So these new images are the closest we will ever get to seeing the wreck.
It is incredible stuff – although I don’t buy the line that these new images mean the Titanic “will at last give up its secrets.”
Don’t we already know what happened?
The Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912.
Out of the 2,223 passengers and crew, only 706 survived, mostly women and children, and mostly from first and second class.
These new images are jaw-dropping.
But the Titanic does not capture our imagination because there is real mystery about how its maiden voyage ended.
We know the Titanic represented the cutting-edge technology of its day.
We know there were not enough lifeboats because it was believed they would never be needed.
We know Kate Winslet had no space for poor Leonardo DiCaprio on her floating door.
The reason we still care about the Titanic is because the unsinkable ship demonstrates how men make plans.
And God laughs.
Reparations? Must be dreaming
WE talk about reparations for slavery – abolished here in 1807 – and yet we never hear about reparations for the evil iniquities of our own age.
What about China paying reparations for unleashing Covid on the world?
How about Russia starting an unprovoked war in Europe?
Where are the reparations for all of that?
Focker scurge
SOME suggest that becoming a dad for the seventh time at the age of 79 will be Robert De Niro’s most difficult role.
“I had a few achievements in my life but being married to the girl in the Victoria’s Secret window is surely my finest,” he sighs.
Abbey’s not so-secret admirer
ABBEY Clancy poses in a range of sporty pants for Victoria’s Secret and her husband Peter Crouch almost purrs with pride.
“I had a few achievements in my life but being married to the girl in the Victoria’s Secret window is surely my finest,” he sighs.
Yes, being married to Abbey has to be up there with Crouchie’s legendary robot dance.
Bring Boris Back
BRING back Boris!” card- carrying Tories chanted at a conference last weekend.
These are the same people who, given the choice between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, voted for Truss.
Bring back Boris?
Why? Boris-loving Tories are as delusional as any spotty-faced student who once sang Jeremy Corbyn’s praises to the tune of Seven Nation Army.
No one rivals Gareth
ENGLAND “could go for a foreigner” as manager after Gareth Southgate says John McDermott, FA technical director.
As we learned in Manchester on Wednesday night, the greatest football manager in the world is a Catalan.
Pep Guardiola would be a great England boss.
But nothing sums up the agony and the ecstasy of our national team like the meme of manager Southgate (circa waistcoated World Cup 2018) consoling the player Southgate (circa grey-shirted Euros 1996 penalty cock-up).
No manager will ever have England in his DNA like Gareth Southgate.
Packet in, guys
ADIDAS claims that its striking ad featuring a biological male in a female swimming costume is “a celebration of self-expression, imagination and the unwavering belief that love unites”.
I’m glad they cleared that up.
For a moment there I thought it was an unapologetic celebration of meat and two veg.