At a time when the UK will need, more than ever, to rely on what it can grow and harvest itself, the warnings have already started. Today’s
Observer has brought the news “
Charter flights to bring in agricultural workers from eastern Europe are needed as a matter of urgency, otherwise fruit and vegetables will be left unpicked in Britain’s fields, the government is being warned”. We need fruit and veg pickers! And there is more.
(c) Guardian Media Group 2020
“
Some large farms have already been chartering planes to bring in labour from eastern Europe. But farming organisations and recruitment agencies say that, in the face of massive disruption to the agricultural sector caused by the spread of the coronavirus, the government needs to step in and help organise more flights. Some 90,000 positions need to be filled, many in just a few weeks’ time”. What to do?
“
Some farms were struggling even before the crisis hit. A tightening of the labour market, a combination of Brexit and the booming domestic economies of eastern Europe proving more attractive to seasonal workers, had seen a decline in the number of fruit and vegetable pickers coming to the UK … British growers have been contacting companies in the hospitality sector to recruit laid-off staff”. We need someone to set an example here.
Who might be best placed to do that? Well, what is needed is someone showing willing, getting out of the big cities, going to Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Kent or the West Country, and able to make some noise about it, be comfortable in front of the cameras, get the message across. Someone who can make the unattractive look good.
Come on Dazzer, bit of supply and demand practical for you ...
And with the Coronavirus crisis cutting down the numbers of talking heads required by broadcasters, those broadcasters looking to give real experts more airtime, the press focusing on the pandemic so not needing all those Astroturf lobby groups and their press releases to fill column inches, there are plenty of fit and healthy young people with time on their hands and nothing else to do. These can be our example setters.
People like Darren Grimes, always willing to shoot his mouth off about nothing in particular, who can now have a purpose in life and become economically productive for once. Guido Fawkes teaboy Tom Harwood, too. And to prove this isn’t a male-only gig, there are also the likes of Charlotte Gill from ConHome and Sherelle Jacobs from the increasingly desperate and downmarket
Telegraph.
... and your economically unproductive pals
They can now cheerlead for the 21st Century “
Dig For Britain”, along with the inmates of all those think tank bunkers, the TPA, ASI, CPS, IEA, Policy Exchange and IoD. Not to mention all those underemployed young people at the increasingly alt-right
Spectator magazine: now, Doug Murray The K can get first-hand experience of what it’s like when you banish all those Rotten Foreigners™ from dear old Blighty.
With these upstanding exemplars in the vanguard, the recruitment drive for fruit and veg pickers can only succeed. By showing the law of supply and demand in action, the right-wing punditerati can not only live the life they are so happy to wish on others, they can, by accepting the pay rates on offer, demonstrate that these are enough to live on.
And they can become even fitter and healthier as they work.
What’s not to like?
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Sometime back around the turn of the century I was at a loose end for a few weeks in May so thought I'd get a few weeks fruit picking on a local farm, having done that kind of work before.
ReplyDeleteSo I rang round, even got on my bike (shades of Tebbitt?) and visited a few farms but to no avail, they didn't want to know. One even told me, quite bluntly, that he didn't hire English pickers because they don't want to work - this to someone who'd spent half a lifetime laying tarmac.
Needless to say, I told him what to do with himself in no uncertain terms - although I did stop short of nutting him in true Yozzer fashion!
As they say, what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow.
Of course the trouble is we shall unfortunately be needing all that fruit & veg, so it seems a bit of a hollow victory of sorts.
They don't want fruit and veg?
ReplyDeleteThen let them eat cake......
Oh come. When they all talk about people going into the fields and doing this hard work, they mean for other people to do it and not themselves
ReplyDelete