10 Jan 2017 (A half finished blog)
Every now and then, there are conversations that make me switch channels. This morning, a Brexit (no comment from me about this so far!) conversation turned direction in to immigration and British people who don’t want to work. This theme pops up every now and then.
The chap in question was a first or second generation immigrant, whose children all started business and became contributors to our economy. He didn’t need to be a recent immigrant to say this. It could have been anyone, and to some point we are all descendants of immigrants anyway.
The point here is that there is a man who is part of a minority and probably had a hard time here almost picking on a worse off minority in order to look more virtuous. Anyone can hit rock bottom at any time. And some of us get lucky, and make their children lucky. Wealth is inherited, but so is poverty.
If work was great, there wouldn’t be so much annoyance about the age of retirement edging towards seventy years and beyond. You may have the magic job in to your nineties that gets you out meeting people and is easy to do. You may be a CEO of a large company, or even president of the free world.
There are roughly 65 million people in the UK. About 9 million people of working age (16-64) are “economically inactive”. Approximately 31.5 million people are in work.
Words of Nonsense 