Posted 2016-May-06, 09:10
It's difficult to know much about it from outside the country but the Guardian keeps running stories about the growing number of homeless in the UK and how subsidized housing is being sold and either torn down or renovated for high end flats or houses, and the former tenants are left to fend for themselves. Indeed someone who used to play a lot on BBO told me he and his son were being evicted for that very reason. He had looked for months for something that they could manage to afford that was still anywhere within range of where they both worked, totally without success, and was expecting to be thrown onto the street in January. Indeed I have not seen or heard from him since December. He and his son both had some issues..he suffered from ptsd and his son had some physical issues; both were working but at low paying jobs, probably more typically than most of the people in this forum or their colleagues. What he experienced seems to agree with the articles in the Guardian.
In the meantime, where are all the immigrants to find jobs and affordable housing if it isn't there for the people already there, who already, for example, speak english and know how to get around in the culture? Is it really true that there are that many jobs that British won't do, that they'd rather be on the street? This is not to promote an anti-immigration theme...where I live if it wasn't for the immigrants the place would grind to a halt because people DON"T want to work at any but the highest paying jobs, but the bottom line is that they are in no danger of being tossed into the street because of it. It is an honestly bewildered question.
To be fair,and this is undoubtedly true in Britain as well as the US and Canada, the lowest paying jobs hardly pay the rent, much less rent plus food, heat, clothes, transportation etc. so perhaps they have a point. As long as someone will work at the fast food, gas service station, Walmart, Amazon etc. jobs for less than it costs to live, nothing will change. Thus you get the stories of 20 immigrants living in a 2 bedroom apartment, they do fine, other than that, because if they are all working, they can afford to live if they live together. That isn't likely to be something that people from perhaps a more reserved society, raised in a culture that trains them to believe they ought to be able to live comfortably in a one family house, is willing or perhaps even capable of choosing to do.
When people talk about racism in Britain, it makes me sad, as if you read about WW2, many of the soldiers sent from the US to Britain were astonished at the LACK of racism, and the Brit's refusal to accept the racist structure that went with the U.S. troops. Not a change for the better.
Add to the mix that many of the multinational companies are transitioning their low paying jobs to no jobs at all through mechanization. Several fast food chains are experimenting with changing over to robots, grocery stores are increasingly using mechanized checkouts, Amazon is also said to be experimenting with deliveries made by drones as well as robots in their warehouses, so even those low level jobs will soon disappear. Seems to me that this is all going to lead to a hopelessness, anger and despair, and that is often at the real base of racism. If people are afraid that what they have is going to be taken from them they are obviously going to be angry and look for a target; immigrants are an easy one.
In the meantime, Apple, Starbucks and others are reported to be paying no taxes whatever so that seems fairly business friendly to me.
I really think that the focus on catering to big business has to change in favor of little businesses or we are all - not just in Britain - going to be in a whole world of hurt fairly soon. The results of the increasing concentration of money and power in a few hands is not working out well at all. It's very very difficult to see this happening with the EU set up as it is apparently working now, certainly it appears generally to be mightilly accommodating to big business. Whether Britain would be better off in or out possibly depends somewhat on whether their government continues the present path or starts looking after its people, and whether that's even a choice if they stay in the EU. Isis may only be the beginning...