By coincidence, I was thinking about priorities this afternoon (forgot to take my mp3 player on the bus into town) with particular reference to Surinder Arora.

His parents had absolutely nothing 60 years ago when they moved from Pakistan to India at partition and left everything behind, and now he has more than £220 million. I was speculating about how much his parents had to sacrifice to be able to have some spare money to lend Surinder to start his first business venture.

I was wondering if any of us could have ended up as wealthy if we had been willing to go without all the non-essentials (holidays, meals out, stereos, booze, fags, cable TV, etc.) for long enough.

I know that if I still had everything I had spent on anything other than food, rent & clothes over the years I would be pretty well off, even without using it to seed a business. Don’t know if I would be happier though.

Well, now that there are a load of people willing to work at lower rates, reducing the costs to developers, perhaps the housing demand can be met. Wouldn’t bother me much if house prices stopped rising at 10% a year to be honest (even if I would be a lot better off personally).

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you or anyone else from the UK moving to somewhere cheaper, within the UK or elsewhere in the EU.

You are of course correct in that immigration leads to a higher demand for housing – a demand that is not being met so we see the massive rise in prices as a result – with the subseqent extra costs that result in people needing to work longer to be able to afford.

So, does that mean that employers should be forcing everybody else to work longer hours, or that the Tories should be supporting them in doing so?

Ash>try asking somebody in the construction industry who has seen rates fall by 30% in the past 5 years due to increased competition from construction workers from other parts of europe.

Is this the same construction industry which, ohh about 5 years ago, was complaining that there was a massive skills shortage, which was driving up wages to a peak and restricting the ability of this country to meet demand? Is it not inevitable that this would attract people into the field, thus reducing the shortage and so reducing the wages?

You forget, of course, that the government didn’t bring people over from Poland, it was just a consequence of the expansion of the EU and the free movement of people that led to some industries being corrected. If it helps, it’s the same rules that allow people from this country to move to cheap houses in Europe, or easily get work in Denmark (seems that there is a spike in demand for IT in the financial sector at the moment, and a lot of UK people are going over there, presumably to undercut the local’s wages).

The thing about freedom of trade and open markets is that they work best with freedom of movement too.

More to the point, is it not likely that immigration would lead to a higher demand for housing and other construction, which would then create a greater demand for construction work over the medium term?

try asking somebody in the construction industry who has seen rates fall by 30% in the past 5 years due to increased competition from construction workers from other parts of europe.

its easy to be blase about the effects of immigration if it doesn’t hurt your pay packet at the end of the week.

I’m glad that you think that overall taxation has not risen – pity that the IMF and OECD dont agree with you

I’m not sure why you persist in seeing immigration as the cause of every problem though. Its a recurring motif of yours. Tax is, but not because it has increased. I don’t think the overall taxation is very different, but the fact it is still too tilted towards those who can afford it less is the concern.

oh dear – more Noo-Labour speak.

Many people NEED to work long hours to be able to pay the bills, bills that have risen faster than wages for most people.

If Council Tax hadn’t doubled, other taxes soared and utility bills increased through the roof then people might be more concerned about their ‘work-life balance’

As it is they have to do longer hours to stand still – especially in those sectors of the economy like construction that have been hit hard by the influx of immigrants.

I find it a bit rich for somebody belonging to a party that has encouraged immigration to keep wages and inflation low and raised taxes massively to then complain about people working long hours.