Parklaner81
Steve Hodge
Woah there. Where have I said that? I was referring to the narrative (which I can understand) which looks back and says, well in my day, you'd get up and take any bloody job you could when you were 16 etc. And I'd agree. But the reality is, when British people picked fruit they were bordering on destitute. We're richer, and that's ultimately a good thing. With less wealth there are positives - more social cohesion as we rely on others more for example creating stronger social bonds - but you can't halt change and go back to world where plucky roosterneys spent their summers picking fruit.
Maybe what made you so defensive is that the gaps are being filled in with EU work migrants. But we all seem to agree, post Brexit we'll allow (or should) at least some of this migration to continue.
The logical progression of this, is to start asking, what changes will we see then, if we are going to allow some migration anyway (and half of our migration is ex-eu anyway), is the control we'll get over immigration worth the sacrifices of giving up customs union membership? Hard to answer that without knowing the full EU deal etc.
I'm not aware that you have said it, that's why I asked you the question. But you have vehemently argued against posters in this thread who have advocated a moderate, controlled approach. It therefore seemed like a reasonable enough enquiry to make.
You state that your 'go backwards' remark was referring to a narrative, but I'm not sure who in this thread has put forward the narrative that you describe - and your question did seem to have been specifically addressed at posters here. Admittedly I haven't read every post in detail, but all I've seen are (what I interpretted to be) genuine & honest questions from other posters about how such positions were filled historically, and the actual true extent to which we have become reliant upon immigration to fill them. That first question doesn't necessarily have to refer back multiple decades. Seeing as we're talking about predominantly eastern European fruit pickers, I took it more to mean pre-2004 actually. Looking at the data annual EU arrivals, gross, hadn't got anywhere near 100,000 before that year. More recently they've been running at roughly 3x their pre-2004 level.
And in any case, I conceded the fruit picker point way back. This is what I find so puzzling about the strength of your opposition. I'm only suggesting control, as opposed to an open door. No more than that. We very well might still need every single one of those Polish fruit pickers...