Migrant workers do vital jobs in our society
IN reply to P Anderson (Viewpoints,
November 14), those pesky migrants get everywhere – helping our sick in the NHS, caring for our elderly folk in care homes and picking our fruit and veg, as well as many other productive jobs.
The Labour manifesto of 2017 does not advocate ‘letting anyone in,’ it has many stipulations including: “We will replace income thresholds with a prohibition on recourse to public funds.”
Included in the manifesto is the commitment to crack down on workplace exploitation of migrant workers, so both migrant and nonmigrants are on a level playing field.
On EU migrants there is a provision in the EU treaty to return migrants that do not have an income after three months of arrival, although this has not been used to my knowledge.
To add to the already chaotic situation the Tory government has reduced the Border Force by thousands – Labour will increase their numbers to a workable level.
Remember it was not migrants who sold off our utilities, caused austerity, reduced funding for the NHS from 6 per cent to 1.2pc of GDP, closed 15,000 beds in the NHS or scraped banking regulation that lead to the 2007 banking crisis.
Instead of this xenophobic attitude you should look at who has been governing our country for the past nine years. Tony Murray, Sale
Nightmare of business laws
THE M.E.N. often brings us stories that inter-relate – and I’m not just thinking of drugs/violence/ homelessness.
A good example was on Thursday with ‘Town hall pledges to get workers a living wage’ updating us on progress of the council’s moves to support lowly paid workers with the ‘Real Living Wage’ and by requiring contractors to include ‘social value’ commitments that ‘will help improve Manchester’ (M.E.N., November 14).
We can all salute the aspiration to create a more equal city.
Turn to page 26 and you get CBI president John Allan talking about the need for further devolved powers for the regions, in particular the north west, so that local authorities know what they can do and (by implication) can get on with exercising control regionally so as to promote their agenda. Sounds like a good idea. However, if the government doesn’t allow Parliament to set the trade negotiations agenda and categorically rules out allowing the system of Corporate Courts, generically known as ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS), we may be in trouble.
Whatever the council’s aspirations and whatever powers are devolved, they will not be practically deliverable if councils and governments face punitive fines for regulating in ways that will impact on the projected future profits of transnational corporations.
This nightmare of big business having its own legal privileges, trumping human rights and national laws isn’t a fantasy.
The EU’s not above reproach on this one.
However, future trade deals that the government has been ‘ghost negotiating’ in secret are likely to include ISDS chapters.
(These ‘ghost’ talks can’t legally take place until we have left the EU but have been going on out of the public eye and without parliamentary authority or oversight.)
All candidates in our election need to put their cards on the table and say clearly where they stand on this. Amy Little, Cheetham Hill
Questions need answers
LAST year I asked the arts organisation Home why it was showing airline adverts while simultaneously boasting about its ‘carbon literacy’ status.
It said: “We meet regularly to discuss from which organisations we accept advertising.
“There are organisations whose adverts we would not be comfortable screening, and therefore don’t.”
I then asked if it would ‘provide a list of examples of advertising that Home has refused in the last year because it was not comfortable showing them.’
It ignored that request.
Last month, Home won some silly award from its Manchester mates for environmental sustainability. I sent last year’s question, the one it had ignored.
It said it had no other comment to make.
So, Home boasts about leadership and sustainability while failing to be even minimally transparent.
Is this is the quality of cultural leadership we have?
It’s more of a tragedy than anything they’ve staged or shown. Marc Hudson, editor of Manchester Climate Monthly
NHS is hit by obesity crisis
THE revelation that in the period April 2018 to March 2019 there were 1,088,000 admissions to hospital for obesity related illnesses is disturbing.
That figure is 620,000 greater than the equivalent for 2013-2014.
Obesity is not only crippling an ever-increasing number of the population but is also crippling the NHS. Action must be taken to emphasise the fact that each of us has, for our own wellbeing, to eat less, drink less and exercise more frequently. J. Hedley, Ramsbottom