One hundred thousand homeless families in England

@SunshineGirl The barge is actually one built for such as the off-shore oil and big civil-engineering industries, so it is not bad accommodation, certainly no "worse" than the sort of chain hotels you find next to motorways and airports.

I live not very far from where one will be placed, and it has attracted a lot of local concerns, not because they are a load of refugees as such but due to no thought given to local services like health-care, but particularly because the Home Office made no attempt to discuss it with anyone locally (except the harbour owners). Nor, probably, to see if there are any local employment opportunities for them anyway. I understand the occupants will be free to come and go, no doubt free to go who-knows-where.

Refugees are those fleeing wars, famines, persecution. There are also the "economic immigrants" who are not fleeing anything but are attracted by better pay, and they are far more problematical and far less likely to be regarded compassionately for they send money out of this country while denying their skills to their own and employment opportunities here.

Though that does not let us off the hook. If they are filling posts Britons cannot or will not take, skilled or unskilled, why is that happening? Why we are short of native skills in building, agriculture, health care, etc? It's no good trades and politicians bleating about having to rely on incomers without asking seriously why that is, what was their part in the situation, and what we do about it.

@ArishMell We were the most enthusiastic members of an open European labour market for a generation and some of us became accustomed to outsourcing less attractive employment opportunities to those who were keener to fill them. That market was shut for political reasons with no real understanding of the economic impact.

The seaside hotels in my locality are also full of asylum seekers. They are living next to farms who have to bring in and house labourers from as far afield as Kazakhstan and Chile to pick strawberries and cauliflowers. My guess is that stigmatising important sectors such as farming and caring as "unskilled labour" does little to endear them as careers to the "natives". However the bigger problems are a workforce too small to support an aging society and generally poor health among those of working age.

@SunshineGirl Yes, they should be working.

@SunshineGirl Yes - I think you are right, and I suspect the open labour market may have lulled us into complacency.

I heard a farmer make the same point about reputation, on the radio not long ago.

That stigmatising of farming and caring as "unskilled" extends to other trades too, leading to schools dropping practical subjects or warping them into purely their theoretical aspects.

We went through some decades of a peculiar idea that no-one needs practical skills, outside of building and medicine perhaps. Engineering, once of Britain's greatest strengths and still very important, was dismissed and sneered at by those paid to know nothing about it. By the same types who speak patronisingly of "down in", when referring to anywhere rural outside the safety of their M25 Corrall. Who think old fishing ports sources of second homes looking out on waters ornamented with quaint old fishing boats.

We see this lingering in the past-pandemic belief that all anyone needs do these days for work, is to sit behind a computer in the spare room. Computers don't make and deliver machines, houses or food!

We need reverse these attitudes, take pride in seeing practical work as at least as worthy as administering pension funds - indeed far more valuable than managing hedge-funds rather than hedges!

.

As for age though, that is a far harder problem. I will be 71 soon but still reasonably fit and active; but I do know my State Pension, bus-pass and health are courtesy of others' Income Tax and National Insurance; just as mine helped those retired before me.

(It's surprising how many think their NI they "paid all my working life" is what they get back on retirement. It is not! It is not a savings-plan.)

Though to be fair, even we retired pay a lot on taxes, and retired or not, the better-off you are the more you pay overall by having more to spend on taxed goods and services - so go and spend it. Even pensions are taxed: you can add your State to company and/or private pensions, but the resulting income above quite a modest limit is subject to Income Tax.

Poor health among those of working age is serious but not something to be generalised. For all those genuinely, unavoidably ill there are also plenty who bring it on themselves, but they still need treating and for all its faults and the terrible strain it is under, at least the UK (as do many other nations) does have a National Health System. It does its best to help people not fall ill, and does not leave you to sink or swim according to bank balance, as was the case until it was introduced; and still is in some countries.

@ArishMell During the pandemic people became briefly enthusiastic about working on farms while they were furloughed . . and quickly discovered that it is actually very hard work if you are not accustomed to manual labour!

I actually work for a pension fund 🙂 But I will only do so for as long as it takes me to pay off my mortgage. Then I will retrain as a maths teacher which I consider to be far more valuable (but less well paid) employment.

The NHS is marvellous (and not just because my wife is an NHS nurse) 🙂 Poor health is not necessarily measured in diagnosable conditions, but in people who eat and drink too much and lead largely sedentary lives. Then they wonder why daily life is a struggle 😔

@SW-User I can only extend my deepest sympathies to you. I don't suppose you are alone in that sort of awful situation either.

However I did not say it does not suffer from its own problems, and I know it can be difficult even simply to arrange a GP appointment. In some ways it is a victim of its own success, and being a humanly-constructed system staffed by people it can and will fail at times. Though failure here is far more serious than, say, a letter delivered a day or so late, a train delayed by breakdown or a motorway blocked by snow.

My point is that it exists at all - the alternative would be even worse and indeed catastrophic for many people. Like other public services, it does need improving, it needs become much more attractive to work for, it needs managing by people experienced in it directly, and allowed to manage it whilst accountable to but free from being experimented on by, successive governments - of all parties.

@SW-User I'm very sorry for your loss and I meant no disrespect. The service requires reform and adequate funding but as @ArishMell says for many people it is much preferable to the alternatives.