catsmate
No longer the 1
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catsmate
No longer the 1
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 34,767
Yeah my SO is an academic physicist and her main project involves a UK university: they've already been notified that there might be issues.
Klimax
NWO Cyborg 5960x (subversion VPUNPCKHQDQ)
I don't think fun is stopping anytime soon:
Brexit negotiators should be prepared for united Ireland referendum, says Irish prime minister
Brexit negotiators should be prepared for united Ireland referendum, says Irish prime minister
A moment ago I was looking up the birth details of my grandmother, born in what is now N Ireland, but born long before Partition. I wonder what her ghost, and her living co-religionists (she was quite an extreme Protestant) will think of giving up the Queen and joining the Republic. Probably that will be a No.
Maybe there will be a United Ireland compromise, and we could have a Royal Republic or something. But that'll be a No too, from the people who this year were commemorating the centenary of the Proclamation of the Republic in Dublin.
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
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May telks Merkel negotiations this year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36841066
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36841066
Ambrosia
Good of the Fods
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2009
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True.
What's most likely to happen is some special kind of visa will get created to allow migrant workers the right to come and do low paid jobs for 6 months at a time, only the Europeans will have to compete with the South Africans/Indians/etc etc when they apply for this new visa.
This just in from the Grauniad:
[full article]
More sky is falling reporting.
If you can't get UK workers to work for you, perhaps consider paying more?
After all competing on price is the worst kind of competing you can do, so I am told...
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
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If it's true that strawberries and similar can't be economically produced in Britain without armies of hard-working east European labour, then the obvious answer is to grow different crops on those farms (wheat, potatoes, animal grazing or whatever) and import the strawberries from other countries.
I suppose if strawberries are much more expensive then most people will stop eating them, but there is likely to be a niche market - e.g. Wimbledon - where the price is high enough to allow British fruit pickers to be employed with high enough rates of pay to fill the job vacancies.
I suppose if strawberries are much more expensive then most people will stop eating them, but there is likely to be a niche market - e.g. Wimbledon - where the price is high enough to allow British fruit pickers to be employed with high enough rates of pay to fill the job vacancies.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Archie Gemmill Goal
Banned
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Expensive strawberries, more CO2 and farmers having to give up their business. Just three of the benefits of taking our country back.
I wish you good luck at competing on quality with British weather. Incidentally, are you buying bridges by any chance?
McHrozni
...and yet for the majority of people, the majority of the time price is important when it comes to food purchases. The UK strawberry crop is too short-lived and too small to satisfy demand so they'll be competing against cheaper imported fruits (unless we're going to remove that advantage with swingeing tariffs). By all means create a small niche market for British strawberries that do command a price premium (like with Wye Valley asparagus or Pembrokeshire Earlies potatoes) but charging significantly more for produce is going to have an impact on inflation resulting lower competitiveness on the world stage (due to higher wage costs) or lower living standards - neither of which is a desirable outcome IMO.
tbh, with enough investment, the UK could start to compete with the likes of The Netherlands who manage to grow a large amount and wide variety of traditional and exotic fruits and vegetables. Of course this would require a complete change of thinking in the UK agricultural industry and likely government support to effect a fundamental change in the structure of the industry.
Brexit, taking our country back - to the 1970's
Archie Gemmill Goal
Banned
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...and yet for the majority of people, the majority of the time price is important when it comes to food purchases. The UK strawberry crop is too short-lived and too small to satisfy demand so they'll be competing against cheaper imported fruits (unless we're going to remove that advantage with swingeing tariffs). By all means create a small niche market for British strawberries that do command a price premium (like with Wye Valley asparagus or Pembrokeshire Earlies potatoes) but charging significantly more for produce is going to have an impact on inflation resulting lower competitiveness on the world stage (due to higher wage costs) or lower living standards - neither of which is a desirable outcome IMO.
tbh, with enough investment, the UK could start to compete with the likes of The Netherlands who manage to grow a large amount and wide variety of traditional and exotic fruits and vegetables. Of course this would require a complete change of thinking in the UK agricultural industry and likely government support to effect a fundamental change in the structure of the industry.
Brexit, taking our country back - to the 1970's
Let's face it though, the temporary work visas for fruit pickers will happen. Plus we won't even have to offer them EU worker protections. Because if there's anything we are good at in the UK it's exploiting foreign labour. It's just the having to treat them as equals bit we found annoying.
Insofar as Dutch produce can still be classified as "fruits and vegetables", as opposed to "biological constructs with the appearance of fruits and vegetables", that is.
The Netherlands is not very well suited to growing such products, and it shows in quality, badly. UK would be, if anything, worse. Stick to what has evolved to grow well in your climate and import the rest.
McHrozni
It appears that your experience of Dutch fruit and veg has been very different to mine.
I disagree, pretty much everything that's grown in the UK has been introduced at some point in recorded history and there's a continuous process of improvement. Most of the fruit and veg we grow in our garden today are significantly better varieties than 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
Thanks to a polytunnel, a greenhouse and improved seed varieties we grow delicious tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, chilli peppers - a range of fruits that have no business being grown at "altitude" in Wales.
Maybe, but having visited the Netherlands (and UK) in the not too distant past, I think the primary difference is that I'm used to stuff grown in more proper climate.
You could say I'm a bit spoiled, I suppose
Maybe, maybe not. I'll remain skeptical until proven otherwise
McHrozni
Did you read the reasons I gave in my earlier post(s) about why people don't do this?
People can't afford to hold down two properties in this country, for example.
How do you solve that?
What sort of pay would be required?
I'll give you a hint, it's going to be lots more than any other similar menial work.
Yes, No, and No.
Yes: more expensive strawberries. If you want British workers to harvest them then your have to pay high enough to attract the required workers - at least until robot technology can be developed to the point where it's cheaper and better than armies of low-skilled workers.
No: have you considered the CO2 emitted by all the jets flying fruit pickers back and forward between Poland and Luton, or wherever?
No: farmers will just grow different crops. That's what farmers have always done - they grow whatever crop they can on their land that maximizes the profits they can make - if there are smaller profits to be made from growing strawberries once low-paid eastern European labour becomes more difficult to obtain, then the farmers will switch to growing some other less labour intensive crops.
gypsyjackson
Master Poster
It's already being done to a certain extent. I visited Thanet Earth in Kent about 6 years ago, which is an integrated hydroponic greenhouse complex which generates much of its own power through renewable means. At the time it was growing 12% of the UK's consumption of peppers (capsicum/bell), but it might be more now.
Of course, it was owned and run by a pair of Dutch brothers.
gypsyjackson
Master Poster
The UK farming industry doesn't, sadly, work exactly like this. While there are some really market savvy farmers, there are more who just grow stuff because it's what their great grandfather did. Add to that the difficulties of land suitability, a largely unskilled or to be fairer an extremely specialist workforce, high capital costs of infrastructure and technology, difficulty of borrowing, and a changing climate, and it is hard to see the market reactivity. Look at the dairy industry.
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