People prepared to take on night shifts are not usually in your high-end social demographic, the kind of people who have "choices". Stephen Frears's 2002 film Dirty Pretty Things highlighted the bleak underground world of the illegal immigrant worker.Solution: clamp down hard on illegal immigrants!
No need to thank me. You’re welcome, ‘Guardian’ readers…
You've lost me. Life is hard for illegal immigrants and booting them out of the country is supposed to help them somehow?
ReplyDeleteMy wife works pretty well permanant nights as a senior midwife. She comes from Middlesbrough. How do I check her status?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the people who work night shifts are thrilled to learn that the Grauniad considers them to be possibly of a lower socio-economic status, unsound in body and not part of the high end social demographic. After all, not everyone can be an over-paid, overweening journalist who resides within a fantasy bubble, can they?
ReplyDeleteSome people need to work unsocial hours to pay their bills, feed their families and keep the country ticking over. Or is it only illegals who make Barbara Ellen's heart bleed so? And what makes her think that night shift workers having two consecutive nights off every week is a rare thing even if they aren't working in illegal sweat shops?
Speaking as an ex-copper who worked various shifts (one full week of nights in every four) on a rota basis for a number of years I'm going to say - fuck you and the crusading bullshit you rode in on, Barbara Ellen. Whining about unfairness to night workers in order to justify your salary, salve your socialist conscience and inflict your leftist dross on the world isn't a job, it's a parasitical infestation. While you play to your shrinking audience the adults residing in the real world will continue doing what needs to be done, 24/7/365.
Rob Fisher:
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware that making life easy for ILLEGAL immigrants was part of the brief
Robert the Biker: well what is the brief, then? What is clamping down on illegal immigrants a solution *to*, specifically with respect to night workers?
ReplyDeleteRob Fisher:
ReplyDeleteSurely these are two seperate issues! We owe ILLEGAl immigrants nothing; who are they? where do they come from? What did they do in their native land to make them come here? As regards night workers, I've worked nights (lorry driving) and it's no fun, but I did get paid extra for the inconvenience. We should probably insist on some of our underclass getting their fat arses out of bed abd doing these jobs, it's not like we have a shortage.
But in answer to the direct question: Clamping down on illegal immigrants is a solution to illegal immigration!
@Rob Fisher: I thought the word 'illegal' summed it up nicely.
ReplyDeleteI work for the underground; night shifts are often the shift of choice for certain drivers as their timing means you're home in time to drop the kids off at school, sleep while they're there, and you can then collect them and be with them until they're in bed - nights start around 11pm. Station supervisors also like them as they're quiet once the station has closed and a lot of supervisors use the time to study for Open University courses and the like.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who works occasional nights, the last thing I want is for some ILLEGAL taking away a job from someone who has a right to be here. Make life as hard for them as possible, hard being making them wish they'd never come here.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad used to work a lot of nights when I was a kid. If Barabara Ellen is going to call him a "lower end of the social demographic" to his face, she's a braver person than I am.
ReplyDeleteBetween years at sea, in the army, in th police, factory work during uni, and every family member the same or similar, I can not imagine a job WITHOUT night shifts, or indeed, as with the army, and on fishing trawlers, WHAT bloody shift? You work 48, 72, 100 hours at a strech, if that is what the job calls for.
ReplyDeleteI am now at the stage, I will ONLY work night shifts. Working during the day light is, for me a MOST strange concept.
Furor, I reckon that working at all would be a most strange concept for Barbie Ellen.
ReplyDeleteAs for the illegals, we're under no obligation to help them with anything but their deportation.
I've worked rotaed nightshifts. Mind you, that was only for two years and it was 40 years ago when I was a resilient stripling in my mid twenties, full of zim, zest, youthful energy, all-round optimism and the sure belief that I would live for ever. The worst thing was the change of shift between night and day. And the worst transition was when you got two thirteen-hour through-night shifts on Thursday and Friday, a four-hour evening attendance on Saturday until 22:00, followed by a 10:00 - 18:00 day duty on the Sunday. That shift in circadian cycle knackered you for three or four days. But that was the worst case and generally the transitions were gentler.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, the blokes who popped their clogs "unexpectedly" in their fifties were the ones who seemed to believe that when you came off shift at eight in the morning, the rest of the day was free to use as you wished. You didn't need to go to bed, 'cos it's daylight now, innit. And some of them had day jobs, usually something hours-flexible like driving minicabs. It wasn't the stress of night work that killed them; it was their inability to understand how to deal with it in a sensible manner.
My father worked nights for about 30 years until his retirement at the age of 65. Whether his heart was rendered vulnerable by this is hard to say. He died from cancer at the age of 85. Oddly enough, my mother, who nagged him to get to bed when he came off shift and made sure that he got his beauty sleep, she died of a heart attack when she was 75.
So it goes.
The say that woring nights affexts you're speling and grandma but ive not notised anting .,
ReplyDelete@Anonymous, second post
ReplyDeleteMine is only a nurse but went to a public school and has a BA Hons.
For my sins, I worked nights for many years, as recently as 2008, when I had to stay i the same timezone as colleagues in Mountain View.
I love the way they sneer at us. Just when will they run out of money?
I'm a nurse and so do night shifts regularly. Amazing as it may seem, the best time to get any treatment you need is at night, Why? Because by then the hospital is only staff who 'do the bl**dy job'!So the place runs efficiently and without incident.
ReplyDeleteThat is what this socialist idiot means. Lower social class means doing a job that is actually necessary, as opposed to all the administrators, secretaries, diversity, equality and H&S coordinators.. Oh, and lets say... a pompous a**hole of a journalist.
So here's a thought. If your line of employment has a night-shift, and your job description doesn't include doing said nights - Then you are not necessary! Simples!
Sack all the days-only staff! ;-)
XX
ReplyDeleteSack all the days-only staff! ;-) XX
And the ESSO men.
(Every Saturday Sunday Off).
"Life is hard for illegal immigrants and booting them out of the country is supposed to help them somehow?"
ReplyDeleteNot them.
"How do I check her status?"
It's like the old joke: "One out of every five children is Chinese. It's not my five brothers, so it must be me!"
"I'm sure the people who work night shifts are thrilled to learn that the Grauniad considers them to be possibly of a lower socio-economic status..."
They must wonder who cleans their offices?
Probably the only time they meet any is when they are crossing over for the day shift...
"We should probably insist on some of our underclass getting their fat arses out of bed abd doing these jobs, it's not like we have a shortage."
ReplyDeleteThere's no 'probably' about that!
"...and a lot of supervisors use the time to study for Open University courses and the like."
Not something that would ever occur to a CiF 'writer'.
"Generally, the blokes who popped their clogs "unexpectedly" in their fifties were the ones who seemed to believe that when you came off shift at eight in the morning, the rest of the day was free to use as you wished. You didn't need to go to bed, 'cos it's daylight now, innit. "
The body's a motor. Rev it too hard and for too long...
Well I won't convince anyone here but just to sum up my position for the record...
ReplyDelete"illegal" means nothing when you are arguing what the law should be. Are commenters here really so confident that the law is perfect that using the word "illegal" answers all questions about immigration? Probably not.
So what will be the effects of clamping down on illegal immigrants? Mostly it will push up the cost of employing people to do night work (or any job that is done now by illegal immigrants).
It strikes me as naive to think that this will somehow help people to get paid more for doing the job they already do. A few might, but mostly what pushing up the cost of something does is to reduce the supply of it. There will be fewer people doing this type of work, and what does get done will be more expensive for the end user, and most people will be poorer as a result.
Other than that I'm in favour of freedom of movement because I'm in favour of freedom for its own sake. But I also think I can argue that it makes people richer, too.
XX So what will be the effects of clamping down on illegal immigrants? Mostly it will push up the cost of employing people to do night work (or any job that is done now by illegal immigrants).XX
ReplyDeleteWHEN the landlord of my house, the electric company, the gas company, the food shop, and a million and one other bussinesses start asking ILLEGAL subhuman-immigrant prices, THEN I will work for ILLEGAL subhumen-immigrant wages.
Until then, they pay the going rate to LEGAL workers, scheißegal where they come from or where they may or may not be going to.
Put them ALL on the next plane out, and drop them off home.