Thursday Music Link
from the "topics for discussion" list - one day, Turkey will be in the EU (yes it will). Turkey has twice the population of Poland and half the GDP per capita. It is also full of people with expertise in the building trades. Casual empiricism - I went on holiday there a couple of years ago in the last two weeks of May which marked the end of the construction season before a moratorium came in for the tourist season - suggests that these guys have a hell of a work ethic, if perhaps lacking somewhat in risk aversion. I watched a McMansion being put up from my balcony over the week and wow. At one point, there was a storey going up every day, but I got the strong impression that every time the muezzin came on the tannoy down in town, the builders were rushing off to pray that the morning's work would still be standing when they came back. So anyway, what cultural impact would we expect the obvious labour market consequences of Turkish EU accession to have in the UK, given what we've seen with Poland? I suppose I've just argued that it depends on whether there's a housing bubble going on.
For some reason I have "The Impression That I Get" on my mind, but I like this one better.
I went on holiday there a couple of weeks ago in the last two weeks of May
ReplyDeleteHas this post been in draft for some time? ;-)
Going through London Bridge every morning, I've been watching the Shard go up, and that's been a floor a day at times. Flinging buildings up isn't that tricky, it's the fit out that generally takes ages.
I think it all depends if all the borders get opened at once, or whatever it was that didn't happen with Poland. (Plenty of room for a few more Turks in Germany, surely.) But if we simply repeated the Polish influx of a couple of years ago, only with (a) dark-skinned Muslims and (b) twice the numbers... ow ow ow.
ReplyDeleteI've no idea what you're talking about Richard, that has always said "a couple of years ago" and I have not edited it at all.
ReplyDeleteBut if we simply repeated the Polish influx of a couple of years ago, only with (a) dark-skinned Muslims and (b) twice the numbers... ow ow ow.
ReplyDeleteIs there any evidence that the Polish influx caused a depression on the wages of the building trades?
Not really, but given what was happening to house prices and construction at the time, it would be the devil's own job to create a counterfactual baseline. From the homeowners' point of view, as you know Bob, it certainly lowered costs.
ReplyDeleteDepends whether you want to think of it in terms of how much objective justification how many people would have for getting how pissed off, or in terms of the likelihood of large numbers of people actually getting pissed off. I think the second probability is rather high.
ReplyDeleteThe Poles had really good trade schools, which is why there were so many skilled tradesmen there. Is there an equivalent in Turkey?
ReplyDeleteAlso the Poles have been really good for the Catholic church. Which is nice.
I think our Poles have all gone home now. (That's the thing about labour mobility - it's mobile.) Certainly about a year ago there were two, count 'em, new Polish shops in walking distance of my house, both of which have now closed. Course, they were also in walking distance of a very large and busy Polish deli which has been there since the 1960s, so maybe they were never really going to make it pay.
ReplyDeletePolonia in exile still thrives up here in Crumpsall. We've had three Polish delis open over the last year and a Polish restaurant open on Cheetham Hill Road where the Kurdish kebab joint used to be. St Ann's church is rammed every Sunday too, so I'm told.
ReplyDeleteWe've seen (going by the Ozdiller stores beer fridge, which I think is a sensitive indicator) a change in composition with the ratio of Poles to Lithuanians and Latvians changing. The Lithuanian beer is less blowsy and malty than Polish, but still rather unsophisticated - I am apparently the *only* non accession state person that buys it.
ReplyDeleteSvyturys is kind of blah: so not surprising you're a fan. On the other hand, what's Mr Bud doing complaining about lack of sophistication in lager?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, you're right. Polish and Baltic beer should have a label on the bottle prominently featuring a young lady exploding out of her blouse, but does not. Instead, it sometimes has pictures of bison. Since I'm generalising casually about culture from the evidence supplied by mediocre beer, I put this lack down to Catholicism or chivalry or something
I'm surprised and rather jealous (there's nothing like a can of Tatra Mocny when you're in the mood, particularly if you can get it for 99p). I guess it really was the competition that did for them, although it does seem odd that the *second* Polski sklep had time to open before the first one had run out of road.
ReplyDeleteThe Poles had really good trade schools, which is why there were so many skilled tradesmen there. Is there an equivalent in Turkey?
ReplyDeleteMy dad, who is both a tradesman and something of a xenophobe, surprised me somewhat a couple of years ago by having nothing but praise and respect for the work done by his Polish peers.
What's the respective housing stock like in Turkey and Poland, I wonder? I'm sure that even the best housebuilders in, say, the US would be fish out of water in a country where everything's double-wythe brick walls and tiled roofs.
(On more important topic, "Baltic" stouts with the flavour and texture of bitumen have been all the rage in the US for a while, but aren't apparently that common in Baltovia.)
Hmm, is structural tile (i.e. that stuff like a really thin airbrick standing on end you see all around the Med, that comes down in a flash when there's an earthquake) even allowed by the building regs here?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure D^2 has noticed this as well, but North London now boasts a number of apparently successful Polish contracting firms, some of which make a positive boast out of being Polish (as in, the sign they hang on their scaffolding is a big Polish flag with the white eagle and the words THE POLES*).
In my corner of North London, you probably wouldn't notice a mammoth influx of Turks...
Also, I'm fairly sure I've seen a US house price index that goes back to the late 19th century.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that even the best housebuilders in, say, the US would be fish out of water in a country where everything's double-wythe brick walls and tiled roofs.
ReplyDeleteAnd internal walls solid enough to take a rawlplug, come to that. Some friends on a mostly-US list were talking about stud-finders a bit back; I had to google it. (Apologies to anyone who has to google 'rawlplug', which it turns out was originally a tradename - they were first made by Rawlings and co.)
You need stud finders in modern British houses as well. That said, modern US houses are incredibly poorly made. If you have German and Swedish houses at one end of the spectrum, the US is definitely at the other. Cheap jerry built shit, even the so called luxury stuff (It looks nice, just don't tap on the walls, or look too closely at the joins).
ReplyDeleteIn Brighton I think the Poles are probably too embedded in the town (kids, mortgages, businesses, etc) to be going anywhere. Though its the Iranians and Palestinians who seem to be the most successful businessmen.
Aint gonna happen anyway D^2.
ReplyDeleteEvery emerging entity needs its defining other, innit.