Hard Choices

Or you could call this divided loyalties. My sympathies lie with the protesters outside the refineries and power stations. It is galling to be out of work and see someone from another country doing work you want to do and are capable of doing. I know it from experience. I am, or was, a software engineer. My work opportunities have dried up over the past few years as, first of all, foreign IT workers entered the country on fast-track visas, and then, after the government admitted that IT skills should not be on the shortlist, companies instead outsourced the work to overseas countries where the cost of living, and therefore the wage bill, was less. Countries to which I couldn't go and get a job. I am a victim of outsourcing. I am not alone, either, as thousands of people would agree if they got their chance to put up their hands and complain.

The chance came yesterday, when the BBC news website opened up a "Have your say" page for the current strikes. Within an hour, the page index numbers had marched to the right at the bottom of the article. When I finished reading all the comments on a page and clicked on the next button, I found myself beginning again at the top of the comments I had only just finished reading, because that number of new comments had been added in such a short time.

One or two of the comments pointed out that it was not illegal, under EU laws, to employ people from an EU state. Nobody, at the time I was reading, pointed out that this was an installation contract, and so the contractor not only had every right but also every reason to employ its own trained staff to carry out the work. I chatted on the phone for a while with a kindred spirit who pointed out that none of these people had clustered around electrical outlets protesting about the import into this country of cheap giant plasma flatscreen TVs.

The fact is, though, that yet again globalisation has twisted and turned and surprised many. They thought it meant a flow into the country of clothing and software and call-centres from India, of cheap toys from China, of magic electronics from the far east. Nobody realised that sometimes the goods would arrive dismantled and would require assembling in this country, and the manufacturer would probably stipulate who put them together.

When I say nobody, there are some people who probably did have some idea. Gordon Brown, for instance, ought to have known. And the reporters now have latched onto this, following the lines that he spoke at the conference in 2007, promising "British Jobs for British Workers". Yes, he probably didn't mean he would flout the EU employment laws, but we now ought to know just what did he mean? After all, if it means we become the dumb animals in the fields while rich foreigners who have become owners or shareholders in great (sic) Britain Plc ride around in their high-tech vehicles, why weren't we told that at the time he announced his vision for our future with that snappy soundbite?

So, even though I know they're not necessarily in the right, my sympathies now lie with the protesters. They have seen a worrying future, where their jobs might be taken away from them by the (often foreign-owned) companies and given to workers who come from outside these shores. And even though they might be in the EU, and therefore have a right to come and work here, they weren't the ones who elected the government sitting over it all and collecting the taxes, making the rules, and trying hard not to shoulder the blame.

If Gordon Brown meant, as his spokesman claimed he did, that Britain would be skilled up to compete in a brave new high-tech world, why has it not begun? Why will the wind turbines which are springing up around the soon-to-be green and pleasant land be made abroad and not in our own country? Why do solar-voltaic cells come from the far-east and not our own silicon valleys? Did Gordon believe in Thatchers vision of our country being a giant service industry selling clever tricks and financial magic to the rest of the world, while the actual goods and produce came in from the countries who didn't know enough to do the tricks?

If so, then why didn't he make sure it was protected? Or is that another part of the Globalisation plan? Everybody gets their turn for a few short months, until a competitor decides they can undercut them? It could be a giant world-wide version of Tesco driving down the price of the farm produce it fills the shelves with. Except that, particularly in the case of oil and gas, the opposite seems to be happening. Everything is getting much more expensive. Including the local and central taxes we all have to pay.

Perhaps the new British jobs for British People that Gordon sees are going to be provided by Tescos and the like. Pushing trolleys around the car-park, stacking shelves, cleaning floors. After all, where I live in the countryside, far away from software houses and what few industries still need knowledge skills, it's one of the few jobs I could get into. And while I'm pushing my long snake of trolleys back from the the collection points to the doors, will I do it happily, or will I look enviously at the rich shareholders, the foreign workers, and want a re-adjustment?

So, my sympathies, I repeat, are with the protesters. It's time for Gordon to either sort things out, or shuffle off. It isn't any good his saying this recession started abroad, not here, because he should have been aware that this was a risk under globalisation. If he wasn't aware, then he shouldn't have been pushing forwards with something he didn't properly understand. And if he was aware, and couldn't prevent it, then he has to go for reasons of incompetence.