The Live TV debate on SKY only had 4 million viewers relative

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

The Live TV debate on SKY only had 4 million viewers relative to 10 million for the ITV live TV debate, so you wasn’t the only person to not see it!

Bloody stupid idea putting something as important as this on a subscription channel, pretty much any old people who still only watch the free to air channels (no free-view) would have missed it unless they watched it at 11:30pm when it was repeated on BBC2!

Sorry to hear you lost your job and had to go with a minimum wage job, hopefully it’s topped up with tax credits to some degree and you don’t loose it and can carry on until you find a better job.

I don’t understand how you think the BNP will solve the problems with the country?

I’m happy to open our borders to highly skilled workers (scientists, engineers, doctors etc…) where we lack enough trained people to meet our needs, though at the same time government should be promoting training in the areas we lack skilled workers. If we shut our borders to highly skilled workers it will damage our economy as some businesses won’t be able to expand by hiring new people and foreign investors will be less likely to invest in a country where they can’t get a skilled work force quickly!

Although I agree immigration generally has been too high, specifically I’ll never understand why we’d allow so many unskilled workers to work here when we have 2.5 million unemployed. It means we have people unemployed that could be working in the jobs taken by unskilled migrant workers, it’s not rocket science.

The government is to some degree trying to address this, for example all jobs have to be advertised for a month before a migrant worker can take a job (I think that’s a good idea if it works) but they need to do much more and it is a case of two steps behind of what should have been done years ago.

We also need government to make it easier for our unemployed people to take short term jobs (summer jobs on farms for example) without it making claiming benefits difficult.

When I was studying to go to University (under a Tory government) I had to claim JSA (income support as hadn’t paid enough NI contributions) while studying: I lied basically as there was no EMA etc… I took a short term work experience type job in a microbiology department of a hospital and it worked out we (had a wife and one son) lost money because I was working full time (it was a Tory government training type scheme as well)!!! It was madness and I only took the job for my CV to help get me into University!

As I understand the system now I’d not be worse off, so that’s a significant improvement, but I don’t know how much better off a person is on minimum wage topped up by working tax credit etc… relative to claiming benefits and not working at all? It should always be worthwhile to work.

The BNP are anti-foreign investment and if you have the slightest idea about the British economy in the 21st century you’ll see it’s strength is in being very open to foreign investment. We are one of the top countries for attracting foreign investment: when I researched this a while back I was surprised to learn this because of how the media and the Conservatives portray Britain under Labour.

If the BNP gained power (they won’t, but imagine if they did) they would pretty much stop foreign investment into Britain. They plan to ‘acquire’ British businesses not owned by British people: they might even steal them ‘back’ which would be illegal and seriously damage our standing in the world!!!

You might think that’s a good idea, but that means the only people who will invest in our country is people born here: would you invest in a foreign country if the foreign government forces you to either sell the business to them or takes it illegally?

This is actually how China used to be before they opened their borders to foreign investment, they had their population starving in bad years!

This severally limits the amount of money that can flow through our economy, we are an old economy which makes significant growth difficult and we need all the help we can get to stimulate more growth (especially now while we are just barely out of recession).

Where ever you live look at the main employers, is it a Japanese car manufacturer, is it the American owned ASDA (Walmart)? Where ever you live, you are benefiting from foreign investment into Britain and it would be economic suicide to try to stop it!

I know it’s idealistic to want Britain to be owned by Britons, but in the world economy it would kill jobs to limit ownership to British people only.

Look at other countries for examples where British investment is helping to drive their economy, British people go to place like China, Africa, India etc… and start businesses and employ local people. Yes the British people that own the business make most of the profits, but don’t forget they might be hiring thousands of people and a heck of a lot of businesses have labor costs as their highest cost of doing business. In many cases the labor costs are going to be far higher than actual profits, that means if a company runs a business in India say and profits £10 million per annum, their Indian workers might be taking £100 million per annum in wages and that stimulates their economy not ours (India gets £100 million, we get £10 million). This is true when companies from India, Africa, Japan, China, Europe etc… run a business in our country and hire our people, the workers get more money than the business profits (more money goes into our economy than out to the foreign investors) which is why foreign investment is so important to all economies and the more you can attract the more prosperous your country will be.

If the BNP did ever get into government and brought in their anti foreign economic policies, it would seriously damage the British economy.

It’s unfortunate recent governments haven’t had better immigration policies as it’s opened the doors to the BNP exploiting British peoples concerns over jobs going to immigrants etc…

David