Thread: British jobs for British workers

03 February 2009 10:05 AM

British jobs for British workers

How interesting that this harmless-seeming slogan is now seen as in some way ‘extremist’ or ‘far-right’. What is wrong with it? What, above all, is ‘extreme’ about it? If we are a country at all, then surely we must put our people first? If we don’t, then what exactly is a country? In fact, if we don’t, can we consider ourselves even to be a country?

The whole idea of a nation is implicitly based on the truth that we care more about some people than we care about others. It is only possible to be effectively unselfish within a group of people that has some sort of family feeling. Such a feeling comes from a shared language, a shared history, a shared sense of humour, and is often also rooted in a shared faith and (in exalted moments) a love or reverence for landscape, music, tradition and other such things, often underestimated in their power to move and bind. A shared law helps.

That is not to say that we do not care about people in other countries. A strong and wealthy civilisation can and should do what it can (NB, what it can, practically and effectively, not what makes it feel good about itself) to help the oppressed or the impoverished of other lands. It should also be prepared to take in refugees, though by definition refugees are fleeing from something, not towards something, and cannot simultaneously be refugees and choosy about where they find asylum.

In fact, any country that is no a self-confident family, bound together by such ties, will not long be able to do any good either to its own people or to any other people. Britain is a telling example of this. As our national feeling for each other declines we become less able to look after ourselves. Step by step, this leads to national economic, social, cultural and military decline, and we cease to be able to look after others as well.

So ‘British jobs for British workers’ is both perfectly reasonable (look at the way the deified Barack Obama is insisting that contracts under his stimulus plan should go to US firms) and wise if we want to maintain ourselves as a society.

The pity is that it is quite meaningless as long as we remain in the European Union (the same force which, for instance, forces us to wreck our Post Office, imposes HIPs on the housing market, imposed the Data Protection Act on us, loads us down with other politically correct laws on ‘discrimination’ which are hugely expensive and counter-productive, penalises us for using landfill, so forcing councils into the recycling frenzy and all that it involves, including fortnightly rubbish collections, drags us into trade wars with the US which are not to our benefit, kills our fishing industry, despoils our agriculture, systematically wrecked our meat industry, obliges us to levy VAT, designs our passports and driving licences, seeks increasing control over our foreign and defence affairs, has a court which can overrule our Parliament….I could go on).

Infuriatingly, most people who are against all or most of the above have no idea that they are the work of the EU. British politicians, perhaps ashamed of their impotence, keep deathly quiet about how they are ordered around by the European Commission, which increasingly drafts our laws and tells Parliament what to do.

We quibble about minor sleaze events, endemic to politics at all time and all places in human history, and do nothing about a giant, genuine and avoidable scandal – the robbery of our national independence. This, above all, has stolen our borders from us.

That rhubarb-coloured passport you hold wasn’t substituted for the old stiff blue British job because of a whim. It is not a British passport. It is what it says it is, an EU passport issued (for convenience) by what is in effect the British County Council. A retired KGB Colonel from Latvia has exactly the same right to enter the country as you do, and the same rights to live in it, and of course the same right to work in it. It is increasingly easy for him to obtain the right to vote in it.

AY17570473Protesters gather All three major parties support this arrangement absolutely, and refuse so much as to discuss secession from the EU. the best they can come up with is ‘Euroscepticism’, which means being rude about the EU in opposition, and giving in to the EU in government.

Their slogan is “British jobs for foreign workersâ€

Union rejects deal to end strikes over foreign workers

• Unite officials dismiss talk of agreement as 'lies and rumours'
• Unions await details of further late-night Acas offer

* Andrew Sparrow and Sam Jones
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009 09.02 GMT

A union representing workers at the Lindsey oil refinery currently on strike over the employment of foreign staff, has rejected a deal proposed in talks with the owner, Total.

Officials from Unite told demonstrators at the north Lincolnshire site that there was no truth to rumours that a deal had been struck last night under which half the jobs would go to British workers.

They described such talk as "lies and rumours" designed to get the protesters back to work.

"This news is as big a surprise to us as it is to yourselves," Phil Whitehurst, of Unite, told the crowd. "When we left the meeting yesterday, the deal that you heard on the television this morning was not in place whatsoever."

Keith Gibson, another union official, told protesters they had rejected an Acas deal put forward last night.

Speaking through a loudspeaker, Gibson said Unite had asked Acas for 50% of engineering construction workers on the project to be made up of UK staff.

He said Acas had offered to give them 40 skilled workers and 20 ancillary workers from the UK – making up just 21% of the workforce on the project.

The crowd cheered as Gibson said Unite had rejected this offer. "They were prepared to give us 40 skilled workers on to this project, plus 20 ancillary staff," he said. "That's what they offered, that's what we rejected.

"We wanted a significant movement towards one for one on this project and we rejected what they came up with."

Gibson said they were told by Acas that Total could not move on these figures because it was a fixed-term contract.

However, the GMB union said today that another offer had been made later on last night, which would see 101 of the 198 jobs offered to UK workers.

A GMB spokesman said: "The offer put to the mass meeting this morning represented an earlier offer which was rejected by the unions yesterday afternoon.

"However, a further offer was made late last night. We are awaiting details of this offer in writing from the employers. Acas has confirmed that the offer entails 101 of the 198 construction engineering jobs being offered to UK workers.

"We hope that this offer can be put in writing as soon as possible and put before the shop stewards.

About 500 demonstrators gathered outside the refinery this morning, with more expected to join them throughout the day.

At one point the protesters gathered in a nearby car park to listen as a representative asked them to be patient.

Standing on the back of a flatbed truck, he said they had been in talks until 8.30 last night.

Other demonstrators held up cardboard signs reading "Workers of the world unite" and claiming that foreign workers at other sites were joining the strike in solidarity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009 ... kes-unions

Why....these people are PROTECTIONISTS!!!

Just a little sarcasm....the US Chamber of Commerce as well as President Obamanation are using this rhetoric to premote outsourcing and insourcing to further undermine American Citizens chances for employment in an effort to bring us closer to a world governance.