Odd stories

Government’s 2016-20 term: Against all the odds

March 29, 2021 by e.vnexpress.net

The first year of a term usually sets the tone for the entire tenure, and the government began the 14th term in a challenging situation.

GDP growth in 2016 was only 6.21 percent against the targeted 6.7 percent, exports too fell short of the 10 percent growth target and public debt had increased to 53.2 percent of GDP, prompting the government to ask the National Assembly to raise the debt ceiling for the 2016-20 period.

The house obliged, increasing it to 54 percent.

The sluggish growth was attributed to several factors like the decline of the mining industry and agriculture being hit by natural disasters and a slump in global commodity prices.

There was a case of environmental pollution that causing fisheries output to decline by an eye-watering 20 percent.

In 2016, one of the biggest environmental disasters to hit Vietnam was caused by a unit of a Taiwanese conglomerate leaking toxic waste into the sea.

Within weeks, more than 200 km (125 miles) of coast had been sullied by the accidental release of chemicals including cyanide, phenols and iron hydroxide.

More than 40,000 jobs were directly affected in four provinces dependent on fishing and tourism. Across the country, a quarter of a million workers felt the impact, according to the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs.

Role of the private sector

But the next three years were another story, especially with respect to growth. The second year saw the economy grow by 6.81 percent, exceeding the target set by the NA.

In 2018 and 2019, the rate surpassed 7 percent for the first time in a decade. Export growth was also high as the trade balance moved into positive territory, and inflation was below 4 percent.

Public debt decreased from about 64.5 percent of GDP at the beginning of the term to 55.3 percent. The debt structure was changed to make it more sustainable and safe.

Before becoming a bright spot in the economy, the private sector used to be a concern for economists. In a 2016 interview Tran Dinh Thien, former director of the Vietnam Institute of Economics, said: “The private sector, even if it is considered ‘primitive,’ contributes 60-70 percent of economic growth.

“A typically strong private sector will have the lion’s share of 80-90 percent. In Vietnam, the rate is a mere 8 percent even after 30 years of successful transformation toward a free market.”

In 2017, for the first time the Communist Party Central Comittee issued a resolution solely on the private sector, Resolution 10, titled ‘Develop the private economic sector into an important driver of a socialist-oriented market economy.’

Under the resolutions, policies for the sector such as relaxed regulations and supportive policies for startups, minimized administrative procedures and licensing, and e-governance have been mapped out.

As a result, the private sector began to grow rapidly. Analysts believe the private economy has become the key growth driver in the medium period.

The most apparent indicator is the record number of newly established businesses every year. In the first four years of the government’s term more than 500,000 were set up.

The handling of foreign affairs was also a highlight, both on the economic and diplomatic fronts. In early 2016, former U.S. president Barack Obama paid a visit to Vietnam. In 2019, Vietnam was the venue for the U.S.-North Korea Summit and the memorable meeting between former U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In early 2019 , Vietnam became the seventh country to ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The trade deal had 11 founding members, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand, Peru, and Vietnam.

In June 2019, Vietnam and the EU signed a free trade agreement (EVFTA) and an investment protection agreement (IPA) in Hanoi after nine years of negotiations.

Rampant Covid-19

Considering the successes of 2016-19 the government and analysts expected 2020 to be a promising year. But then came Covid-19 and pushed the targets for the five years hopelessly out of reach.

The pandemic dragged Vietnam’s 2016-20 average economy down to around 5.9 percent, the lowest rate in a long time, and as against a target of 6.5-7 percent.

However, Vietnam’s was one of the few economies in the world not to shrink in 2020 thanks to its successful fight against the pandemic.

Besides the achievements, which Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc described as a ship’s thrilling journey through storms, the economic development is still hindered by bottlenecks.

The economy depends largely on manufacturing for growth, but the sector is dominated by foreign enterprises. They also dominate imports and exports, meaning they determine the balance of trade.

Chief Economist from the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research (VEPR) Pham The Anh said in recent years growth has depended a great deal on the use of bank credit. The annual credit growth rate (12-14 percent) is more than double the GDP growth rate, which indicates inflation and asset price bubble risks.

Revenues from foreign-invested enterprises are also low due to tax and other incentives, shifting the pressure to domestic businesses.

Public investment was the savior of the economy in 2020. But in previous years public projects were not too efficient.

The performance of state-owned enterprises and a new growth model are also topics the new government needs to focus on, he added.

The special story of the ‘odd’ man with the ancient ironwood forest

February 16, 2021 by vietnamnet.vn

Trieu Tai Cao, 80, in Quang Ninh province, a Dao Thanh Phan ethnic minority man, always has a feeling that money is never enough, and if the forest is cleared, it will be a lifetime regret.

Cao family’s small and simple house in Bang Anh village, Tan Dan Commune, in Ha Long city in Quang Ninh province is located at the end of the village, nestled at the foot of Ha My Pass, where he came nearly one century ago to settle down.

In the past, he and his family members led a nomadic life. They left for other areas when the soil became barren.

In the 1960s, he followed his father through the forests to dig aloe wood, because they heard that if they could find it, they would become rich and have a new life.

They and other people dug everywhere, but very few people found aloe wood, while the majority of other people had to return home with empty hands. Cao felt sorry for the forests which were devastated by people and decided that he would re-plant rare and precious trees.

In 1969, responding to Uncle Ho’s call to plant trees, Cao decided to settle down at the foot of Ha My Pass and began planting precious perennial trees.

In the early days, with a basket of rice balls on his back, Cao traveled all over the forests to collect seedlings and seeds to grow on the hill behind his house.

In 1980, Cao family was allocated to manage 32 hectares of forests. Together with his sons, he grew more precious wood and herbs.

Over the decades, small trees grew into big trees, and shed their seeds which grew into new trees. There have been hundreds of precious perennial trees on the hill.

“The forest is my flesh and blood. Many people came to see me and asked to buy ironwood at high prices. Some of them even asked to buy the entire hill, but I shook my head,” he said.

At night, if hearing sounds from illegal loggers’ saws, he and his sons would go to drive them away and sometimes they shed blood.

“No matter how much money you have, you will spend all. But if I chop down the trees, I will feel a lifetime regret. I don’t want my children and grandchildren to only see ironwood trees on textbooks or TV,” he said.

Inheriting the determination to protect the forest

As the youngest son of the family, Trieu Tien Loc understands his father’s heart. In childhood, he was told not to deforest because the forest is the place where animals live. In 2012, 32 hectares of old ironwood forest were divided by Cao among his five sons, and no tree has been chopped down since then.

Every day, after returning from work, he goes around to examine the trees. On the way to the top of the hill, he talked about how to protect the forests and the positions of big trees.

There are over 300 ironwood trees with trunks large enough for two people to embrace. He grows herbs and short-term crops under the canopy to get extra money.

“Many people advised me to sell trees to get money to re-decorate my house. However, I find that my life is comfortable enough and I cannot sell my father’s remembrance,” he said.

“They think I am foolish. But I don’t care. I will protect the forest to the last breath,” he said, smiling.

In 2018, when former Quang Ninh Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Van Doc visited the forest, he was very surprised. He admired the family, which lives in a remote area in difficult economic conditions, but tries every way to regenerate forests.

Cao’s forest has been zoned for precious genetic resources protection. The provincial authorities have approved it as an ecotourism site for free for those who love nature.

Chuyện đặc biệt của ông già 'gàn dở' với rừng lim cổ thụ

Cao’s simple house is nestled in the forest at the foot of Ha My Pass.

The village patriarch Trieu Tai Cao wants to preserve the forest for his descendants.

The ancient ironwood trees behind Cao’s home. Many people ask to buy trees, but Cao refuses to sell them.

At the age of 80, Cao still remembers exactly the position of each ironwood tree he grew and took care of. The promise to protect forests keeps the forest passed on from generation to generation of the Trieu family.

Assigned to take care of the father, Loc has been allocated nearly 10 hectares of ironwood forest.

The 32 hectares of ancient ironwood forest where no tree has been felled.

There are over 300 ancient ironwood trees.

Loc and an ancient ironwood tree.

Former Quang Ninh Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Van Doc visits the forest of the Cao family.

Pham Cong

‘Old Daddy’ finds a place in the heart

March 28, 2021 by vietnamnews.vn

by Nguyễn Mỹ Hà

“Have you seen Bố Già , it’s quite touching,” my friends exclaimed after taking their families to see the film, made with a new plot and story twists while retaining the cast that made the popular web drama it’s based on.

Trấn Thành, 34, made his name playing comedic roles in the web drama after appearing in popular TV game shows.

He then worked with director Vũ Ngọc Đãng to launch a big screen feature film that promised to wipe out everything viewers had seen in the series and provide them with a completely new storyline and context.

Released for just over a week, the film has grossed VNĐ300 billion (US$13 million) against a production budget of VNĐ20 billion ($850,000) — an all-time box office record in Việt Nam. It has piqued the interest of viewers from all walks of life, as it touches upon the nature of a loving, doting father figure, living in a poor neighbourhood of a big city but constantly caring for his family and anyone who comes to him for help.

“When the credits rolled at the end our teenage kids came to hug us,” said one of my friends, who took her family to see it. “We loved the movie and the message it sends.”

Bố già literally means “Old Daddy” in Vietnamese, and was actually the name given to the film classic The Godfather , which remains popular in Việt Nam.

Unlike Marlon Brando’s character, however, Bố già is neither rich nor powerful but has a big heart and is kind towards all around him.

The name “Old Daddy” nails it, as many neighbourhoods have an elderly gentleman with a kindly soul who is able to do odd jobs around the home to help out. The twists, the sharp dialogue, and the comedic situations make the film both touching and funny.

“Some of the scenes really are sweet,” said one teenage viewer, “and if it weren’t for the fact that it was Trấn Thành, I would have shed some tears.”

Known for comedic roles and quick dialogue, many were surprised to hear he was involved in a serious feature film as co-director, scriptwriter, and leading man.

“I had my doubts at first,” one friend said, “but this proves he’s a great actor who can both make us laugh and move us to tears.”

Leading men have become quite popular in recent years. Images of Vietnamese men fighting in war, or being lazy, grumpy, and demanding are a welcome absence from our screens.

The part of a loving father, who may have been widowed or left by his wife, is a sympathetic figure for most viewers.

“Such men do not exist in real life,” according to one colleague, though, who found him ‘too good to be true’. “The film has good intentions, and it’s worth seeing, but I found it rather pretentious because of the snappy dialogue. It’s basically about a father-child relationship, so its message does at least have a human element.”

Originally scheduled to premiere on the first day of the Lunar New Year that fell on February 12 this year, its release was delayed for a month due to a new outbreak of COVID-19 in late January.

Lockdowns in some provinces, the gloomy situation around the world, and closed borders have brought people closer to their families. And maybe created a time for loving family-oriented entertainment.

I’ve actually been hesitant about going to see it. As adults, not much will be changed by a film and especially not how we treat our parents.

But it might change the way our children treat us. They all leave home someday, and if there’s a chance to spend quality time together, maybe it’s time to set my hesitation aside and head to the cinema. VNS

How two decades of EU migration went into reverse

April 3, 2021 by sggpnews.org.vn

Illustrative photo

Marcin Poltorak still has the one-way bus ticket that took him from Krakow, Poland, to Manchester in August 2004, aged 26. “The plan was to work for two years then go back and buy a house,” he recalls. Poltorak found a job in a slaughterhouse in the northern town of Clitheroe and, 17 years later, remains in the UK: “It was so much better here,” he says.

When prime minister Tony Blair opened Britain’s doors to workers from eight former communist states in central and eastern Europe that year, it was a big decision with huge ramifications. Over the next decade, Britain’s economy and society were transformed by hundreds of thousands of arrivals from Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. At its peak, the number of European migrants in the UK was by some estimates five million or higher, from a population estimated to be more than 66 million. London’s Victoria coach station was packed with people starting a new life and soon the country’s bars, hotels and farms spoke with different accents.

“We’ve got to be honest with ourselves,” Blair tells the Financial Times. “We pursued an open labour-market policy because, at the time, our economy was booming and we needed the workforce.”

The decision convulsed UK politics. According to Nigel Farage, former leader of the Brexit party: “That one issue had more impact on the political direction of the UK than any other political decision in recent years. No question about that.”

The after-effects of Blair’s move were still being felt by the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU; in one poll, a third of Leave voters said their main reason for voting for Brexit was to control immigration.

Now, nearly two decades of migration into the UK appear to have reached another turning point and are going into reverse. The Brexit vote shook the faith of some immigrants in the country they called home, while the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a big return of workers after their jobs disappeared or were put on hold.

Over the past year, tens of thousands of workers at least have returned to their countries of origin or to other countries in the EU, according to academics’ calculations. Some claim the return migration is on a much bigger scale: “It’s an absolutely massive deal,” says Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford university, on the shift to net emigration.

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Many of these people will come back when the British economy returns to life, but some will not. And for the companies that have come to depend on an apparently inexhaustible supply of foreign labour, a big change is coming as post-Brexit immigration rules kick in.

The FT has spoken to political figures involved in the immigration debate over the past 20 years, to those who left their homes to come to the UK — and to those who have now decided to go back.

This is the story of how one of Europe’s largest peacetime migrations shaped a country and of the people who made their lives in Britain. It is an account of how those driven to seek work and a better life inadvertently found themselves in the Brexit maelstrom and the pandemic and of the calculations they are now making on whether to stay or to go.

There are as many migration stories as there are migrants and each person weighs up their life and their options differently. But the upheaval caused by the pandemic has led a growing number of people to ask themselves whether the costs of remaining in the UK are greater than the benefits.

Kasia Przybylo looks pained as she contemplates the question of returning to her native Poland. Since 2010, she has lived with her husband and children in Bedford, 45 miles north of London. But Przybylo, 48, explains that she is facing a dilemma.

Her parents are growing older and she misses her homeland. It would, however, be a big shift for her 10-year-old twins, born shortly after her arrival in the UK, to move from the English education system to Poland’s. Her husband is happy with his job as a truck driver in Peterborough. Her own English is improving and her older daughter, 18, and son, 25, are determined to stay in the UK.

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Newly arrived Polish people checking a board for jobs, London, 2005. At its peak, the number of European migrants in the UK is estimated to have topped five million © Piotr Małecki/Panos Pictures

In a sparse consultation room at the offices of PBIC, a group in Bedford that helps eastern European migrants, Przybylo says she has been thinking hard about leaving but, for now, the balance remains tipped in favour of the UK. “It would be a difficult decision because of my children,” she says. “I’m not thinking of going back to Poland now — but maybe in the future, when I retire.”

For others, the time to leave has already arrived. Michal — who declines to give his surname — moved to the UK in 2012, initially for an internship, before starting a career in technology in the financial sector. Like many people, he had frequently considered moving back, only to find reasons to stay.

Speaking to the FT from Krakow, he says: “I would say, ‘OK I’ll stay another year, because there’s a new opportunity, there’s a new company, I’m entering a different phase of life.’ It ended up being eight years. I was still considering staying a bit longer, but there were multiple things. Covid was one, Brexit was another. The [state of the] contracting market in the UK was another.”

The arrival of the pandemic — with its switch to remote working, which meant that he could do his job from Poland — tipped the odds in favour of moving to Krakow, where he already had a flat.

Michal has a British passport, which means that returning to Britain would not be difficult. But now aged 30, and with a small son to look after, he says that the quality of life is just better. “It’s much cheaper, and we can live in the centre of Krakow, in a nice location, have a much bigger flat than we could afford in London, especially as we are in that stage of life when we are spending more time at home, and not just being all the time at galleries and sports events and so on.”

Another Pole who has left the UK is Piotrek Przyborowski. When the pandemic hit, he was in the final year of a degree in film production at York university. He was due to start a one-year masters in international journalism in London after graduation but, with the virus raging, decided to move back to his hometown of Poznan in western Poland in June to complete his studies remotely. “It just made more sense if we were only going to spend one day a week on campus,” he says. “Also, I would have been almost alone in London at that time, because all my Polish friends who were studying in London went back to Poland and my international friends from York also went home. So I just decided to go back home.”

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Piotrek Przyborowski completed his final year at York university remotely from his hometown of Poznan in Poland, and has shelved plans to return to London for a masters © Kamila Lozinska

The day before he left York, Przyborowski applied for pre-settled status — the post-Brexit “right to remain” system for established EU migrants — to ensure that he had the option of coming back to the UK. But soon after returning to Poland he got an internship running the YouTube channel of Warta Poznan, one of the city’s football clubs. For now at least, he’s staying put. “It’s kind of a dream job,” he says.

While stories of people leaving are plentiful, experts have been peering through the muddiest of waters to decide how big the exodus has been overall. There is general agreement, however, that we have reached a historical turning point.

As recently as the year ending March 2020, 58,000 more EU citizens arrived in the UK than left. The peak inflow occurred in the year to June 2016, when 189,000 more Europeans arrived in the UK than left. Now we know this has gone into reverse.

Figures are unclear, however. In March 2020, the government suspended the survey of passengers at ports and airports that provides the backbone of analysis of changes in the UK’s migrant population, and nearly every statistical tool used to check its results has been suspended or disrupted.

The highest estimate of the fall in the UK’s foreign-born population — by the government-funded Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence in January 2021 — suggested up to 1.3 million people born abroad (both EU and non-EU citizens) left the UK between the third quarter of 2019 and the same period in 2020. The lowest estimate — by Ian Gordon, emeritus professor of human geography at the London School of Economics — puts the outflow at 235,000, with 42,000 of those EU citizens.

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Madeleine Sumption says all the evidence currently suggests a “substantial decrease” in the UK’s migrant population “for the first time in a long time”. “That in itself is something that absolutely no one would have anticipated a couple of years ago,” she adds.

She is reluctant to put a number on how many EU citizens she thinks have left, but estimates that they account for just under half the approximately 450,000 foreign-born citizens she calculates have left the UK. “Anything in the 100,000 to 300,000 range would be broadly plausible,” she says. In other words, it is as if most of the population of Cardiff had abruptly decided to leave the UK, and no one is sure when — or if — they will return.

In 2004, globalisation was at its peak and Britain was booming. Expansion of the EU was seen by successive British governments as a means of binding former communist states into the west. It was also seen as a way of diluting the influence of France and Germany. “Wider, not deeper,” ran the mantra in London. Little more than a decade later, that decision contributed to Britain’s own departure from the EU.

Farage was one of a small band of Eurosceptic MEPs who voted against the enlargement in 2004. “I turned to my colleagues and said that was the best day’s work we have done in our lives,” he recalls to the FT. Farage argues that, although they lost the vote, the Eurosceptics had helped to define the debate.

In big cities, which generally voted Remain in 2016, the new arrivals from Europe after 2004 had added to the cosmopolitan buzz, while providing middle-class families with a ready supply of builders and cleaners. But elsewhere, particularly in rural areas, they put pressure on school places and health services. In Boston, Lincolnshire, for example, the town’s migrant population quadrupled between 2004 and 2014; EU migrants are thought to make up more than 10 per cent of the population and it had the highest Leave vote of anywhere in the UK.

All this helped make EU membership a big issue for many ordinary voters, and gave the Leave side leverage. “They saw the impact on their daily lives — it was utterly decisive,” says Farage.

Along with Sweden and Ireland, Britain was one of only three EU countries to open its labour market immediately, while others, including Germany, decided to apply controls on workers coming in for seven years. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the bloc in 2007, the UK did apply a seven-year jobs freeze on nationals from those countries.

Blair admits his government vastly underestimated how many people would come but defends the policy. He argues that since all EU citizens had the right to travel freely across the bloc, many Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs and others would simply have come to Britain and worked in the black economy: that is what happened in Germany, he says.

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A Polish delicatessen in London, 2007. Restaurateur Jeremy King says EU migrants brought culinary expertise and culture to the UK: ‘I call it the continental influence’ © REUTERS/Agnieszka Flak

Critics say Blair wanted to import cheap labour to hold down prices and supercharge the British economy. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he says, adding that many new arrivals were highly qualified. “It was only in particular areas where there’s any evidence there was a downward pressure on wages.” However, he does admit that, had he known how many people would come, he would have imposed “a lot more controls”, for example limiting access to benefits or requiring people to find a job within a certain period of time.

Does Blair think people who left during the pandemic will come back? “I think for those people who left because temporarily their job had gone — which would be quite a significant number — they may come back,” he says. “But they may find it more difficult to come back. And those people who left because they didn’t feel welcome in Britain any more — I doubt if they will come back.” What happens if they don’t? “You just deprive yourself of a highly motivated group of people.”

Marcin Poltorak’s story is typical of the experiences of many who arrived in Britain after 2004. He joined friends at the Clitheroe slaughterhouse, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a shared house and sending most of his earnings back home. “It was the hardest I have ever worked,” he recalls.

By 2009, he had bought a house on a former council estate in Preston, a city of about 142,000 in the north of England. It contains touches of his homeland, such as wooden furniture and carvings from the Tatra mountains. His wife Alicja, who spoke no English when she arrived, now works in a sewing factory where almost the entire staff are Polish.

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From left: Marcin, Karina, Kasper and Alicja Poltorak at their home in Preston, last month. Marcin says Britain has been good for him, but describes Brexit as ‘a sad moment’ © Christopher Nunn

The couple have two children, both born in the UK. “In England you work hard, you get a house, car, a foreign holiday once a year,” he says. “It has been so good for me.”

But the atmosphere around the Brexit vote soured the mood, admits Poltorak, who has worked as a go-between for the police and Preston’s eastern European migrant community. As well as experiencing abuse in the streets, he recalls youths damaging a car and even setting fire to a hedge. “Brexit was a sad moment,” he says.

Jakub Krupa, a journalist and board member of the POSK Polish Centre in London, says that Brexit was when many began to consider whether they really had a future in the UK: “That was the first moment where they were faced with the question, ‘What do we do with this?’”

He adds: “For the first time in many years, people sat down and discussed all sorts of issues together. So the conversations, even if they were prompted by Brexit, were not necessarily about Brexit.”

Speaking to the FT, Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, argues that Brexit unsettled many migrants from the EU, describing migrant workers at City Hall as “traumatised not just by the Brexit result but by what happened next”. Some Brexiters contest claims that the 2016 referendum campaign — which had a heavy focus on migration — was responsible for an increase in reported hate crime. However, 10 police forces in the UK reported an increase of more than 50 per cent in the number of suspected hate crimes between July and September 2016, compared with the previous three months.

But it is the pandemic that has forced the hand of many migrants and left a cloud of uncertainty over a British economy that has been hit harder than any other in the OECD. With leisure, hospitality, culture, tourism and retail all frozen, Khan says people without jobs cannot afford to stay: “People have returned home to mum or dad, rather than paying high rents in London.”

Although the mayor believes many will come back to the capital if they enjoy settled status — “they love London” — he fears for its services sector if they don’t; “It’s going to be difficult to fill those vacancies without EU citizens.”

That raises a big question: who will do these jobs if EU migrants won’t? Priti Patel, Conservative home secretary, argues that if Britain reduces the supply of labour from central and eastern Europe, then employers will have to recruit locally or provide training for the roughly one-fifth of Britons aged 16-64 classed as “economically inactive” — even though many of them are students, looking after families or long-time sick.

The challenge in the hospitality sector is particularly vivid. Just before the first lockdown, hospitality software provider Fourth analysed 4,000 businesses in the sector and found that just over two-fifths of their workers came from the EU, with the majority paid an average hourly wage of £8.85.

As lockdowns end, restaurants, hotels and pubs now face a sudden rise in demand but fewer staff to cope with it. The sector has about two million on furlough and “we simply don’t know how many will say ‘I’ve moved on’ or ‘I’ve moved home’,” says Kate Nicholls, head of trade body UKHospitality.

Ludovica Pilot, assistant manager at London pub Aragon House, says that recruitment is a growing concern among the managers of her pub company, City Pub Group: “We are aware of how many people have left the UK and gone back to Europe or found other jobs during the pandemic like become delivery drivers for Amazon [and] I’m sure that a lot of the European citizens might not come back. It’s definitely a big weight on our minds.”

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Many operators in the sector are contemplating ways to encourage more UK nationals into hospitality careers, although multiple restaurant and hotel owners told the FT that, for whatever reason, many British-born workers don’t feel that entry-level service-sector jobs are for them. “Past evidence would suggest that there is no appetite on the part of UK residents to be frontline staff, doormen, housekeeping,” says Chris Mumford, a headhunter for hotels.

The problems are similar, albeit in a grander setting, for Jeremy King. He sits amid the empty tables at one of his restaurants — The Delaunay, on Aldwych in central London — and explains how his business thrived on the UK’s previous open-door policy for European migrants. King, who set up the restaurant with his business partner Chris Corbin in 2011, says that before coronavirus, about 70 to 75 per cent of staff at The Delaunay and other restaurants in the Corbin & King chain were from mainland Europe.

The dark wood panels of the Delaunay’s dining room make clear its debt to central Europe’s grand café-restaurants and King, like many business people, insists that there was more to free movement than cheap, willing labour. “It’s the expertise and it’s the culture,” he says. “While Britain has had this surge in culinary expertise and reputation over the last 30 years, I put it down in the majority to what I would call continental influence and support.”

His staff now feel “disenfranchised, unloved and unwanted” in the UK, he adds. “We immediately lost a very high proportion of the Polish workers after the 2016 vote because a lot of the residents on the estates where they lived thought that was a mandate to harass and bully them and tell them to go home,” King says. “A lot of them did.”

In other industries, the stakes are even higher. Workers from eastern Europe have become integral to the UK’s food-supply chain. In food and drinks processing, about a quarter of workers are eastern European, according to the Food & Drink Federation.

Florin Flavius Luca, a 41-year-old from Romania, spent two years from 2014 to 2016 working night shifts at a factory near Sheffield, assembling pots of prepared food for sale in supermarkets for just above the minimum wage. Most of his colleagues were from eastern Europe.

“The work was not easy, you were working on a [production] line at speed,” he says. “You started with sauce and added meat and vegetables to the pots, then on the end there was a sealing machine. Everything was fast-paced and it was cold, minus two or minus four degrees.”

Luca moved to the UK seven years ago for his son’s education and had hoped to buy a home here. However, he gave up that dream after he was made redundant from the factory and later had to shutter a Romanian restaurant he opened.

He now expects to move back to Romania in a couple of years.

Trade groups and unions warn that, again, British-born workers don’t seem inclined to take up food-factory jobs. Before Brexit took effect, eastern European people accounted for almost all of the 70,000-80,000 seasonal farm workers who each year gather the UK’s fruit and vegetable harvest, so farmers are also bracing for a year of deep uncertainty about recruitment.

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Packers at a farm near Dorchester, 2020. Pre-Brexit, UK farmers relied heavily on seasonal workers from eastern Europe, and now worry about recruitment © ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images

When coronavirus blocked some overseas workers from travelling in 2020, farms held a campaign to attract UK workers, with very limited success: just 11 per cent of workers last year were from the UK and many of those did not stick at harvesting for long. Of workers placed through Pro-Force, one big agency, fewer than 4 per cent were still employed by the end of the season.

A pilot scheme for seasonal workers, previously used to bring people to the UK from non-EU countries such as Ukraine and Belarus, has now been expanded in terms of numbers. This could bring in up to 30,000 overseas workers for the harvest, in a notable exception to post-Brexit rules, which prioritise skilled workers earning at least £25,600 a year.

Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the National Farmers’ Union, says farmers were “delighted” with the expansion of the pilot scheme, which previously allowed in 10,000 workers, but that the sector expects labour shortfalls in the future.

“The pool of EU workers [with settled status] will begin to exhaust itself,” says Bradshaw. “There is going to have to be a drive to recruit from the UK workforce — a much more targeted campaign.”

If the UK is about to have its demographics reshaped once more, hotels, pubs, farms, Catholic churches and schools could all look very different. Sumption says: “I think there are people who have left who will never come back. It’s a very important inflection point.”

Farage insists his campaign for Britain to take “control” of its borders was never about xenophobia. Despite the Leave campaign’s relentless focus on immigration, “The question wasn’t a racial one — it was a numerical one,” he says.

But Blair warns that the tone of the Brexit debate — and the aftermath of the decision to leave the EU — will hang over Britain. “Overall, I think we will end up losing if we don’t have those people coming in from Europe any more,” he says. “I think we’re going to struggle because there are many reasons why people have gone back. They’ve gone back partly because in countries like Poland there has been a very substantial rise in real wages. But they’ve also gone back, frankly, because they don’t feel so welcome.”

For those who have made their homes in Britain, decisions on what to do next are often bittersweet. The UK has been a source of adventure and work — and in some cases a bastion of liberal values compared to less tolerant regimes in countries such as Poland and Hungary. At the same time, their home countries have grown richer while they have been in Britain — and the post-Brexit rules make it harder for friends and family to join them.

How two decades of EU migration went into reverse ảnh 10

Five years after arriving in Britain Marcin Poltorak bought a house on a former council estate. But he says that if he were in his twenties now he would not have had to come to the UK © Christopher Nunn

For Marcin Poltorak, Britain is home for his family and three Alsatian dogs. His 19-year-old son Kasper played youth football for Preston North End and is now a student in the city; his 12-year-old daughter Karina wants to be an actress. But he says that, after 15 years of EU investment in Poland, the UK no longer has the same allure for young Poles. “My region is now a tourist centre. There are great roads, cycle paths, restaurants. When I grew up, all people did was drink vodka.”

In a sign of progress, Poland itself is now a magnet for Ukrainians searching for a better life. Poltorak says: “If I was in my twenties now I would never have to come to the UK.”

But one day, he and his wife Alicja will head back to Nowy Targ, a town at the foot of the Tatra mountains, by car rather than coach — the reward of their labours. He smiles: “I am going to retire at 67 to a log cabin in the mountains for us and the dogs.”

Financial Times

Israel’s challenging journey to success

April 15, 2021 by vietnamnews.vn

Israeli Ambassador Nadav Eshcar wrote to Việt Nam News on the 73rd anniversary of Israel’s Independence.

The modern State of Israel was established 73 years ago. It marked the end of thousands of years’ long journey of the Jewish People to self-determination and political independence. The young State faced enormous challenges. Among them, harsh climate, water scarcity and arid soil, inhospitable for agriculture. Moreover, Israel had to face hostility from its neighboring countries, and to manage a major wave of Jewish immigration from different parts of the world. This was a challenging task, as the Jewish immigrants came from different cultures, had a different mentality, and above all – they spoke different languages. At the time, political, security, social and economic goals seemed beyond reach. Nevertheless, there was no other choice but to move forward and build a State.

Vietnamese students depart for Israel to join an internship on agriculture field in 2020. Courtesy Photos of the embassy

I remember my Grandfather telling me his life story and how back in Poland, he was a librarian, but when he immigrated to Israel, he had to become a farmer. He learned how to grow cotton, in his socialist-communist village called ‘Kibbutz’, when the outside temperature was over 40 degrees Celsius. “How could you do that?” I asked him with amazement, and he replied, “There was no other choice. In Europe, my whole family was murdered in the Holocaust. We can never go back there. We must have our very own place, and every drop of sweat was worth it”.

Slowly but surely, the State of Israel developed, and against all odds it managed to face the many challenges ahead. Israel developed smart solutions enabling growing food crops in spite of the harsh conditions. In its early years, top Jewish scientists from Europe and America joined the efforts to develop the young country and began establishing Universities in order to educate the future generations of scientists, who could develop relevant technological solutions for the countless challenges ahead.

The progress made in the scientific fields led to the development of other sectors relying on science, like the pharmaceutical industry as well as the defense industry. Education played a central role in the country and in the lives of every family, becoming the backbone of the country and the Israeli society. At first, the educational system focused on creating a unified society, with one language and one narrative. In later years, it shifted its focus to the importance of education for the sake of acquiring knowledge in order to contribute to the progress of the Nation and the people.

In the past years, Israel has become a world leader in variety of fields, especially in technological aspects. I truly believe that our achievements are the result of the harsh conditions our country faced in the beginning. Today, Israel is a leading country in smart agriculture, water technologies, cyber security and medical innovations. Israel is also prominent in telecommunications and the automotive industries. Israel is considered one of the most innovative countries in the world. It is evident even during these difficult times in which the whole world is dealing with the terrible COVID-19 pandemic. Israeli scientists and doctors have managed to develop an innovative experimental treatment to cure the disease among those who have already been infected.

A volunteer from Heroes for Life organisation from Israel teaches English to children in Lào Cai in November 2019. Courtesy Photos of the embassy

At the first phase of the clinical trial, 33 out of 35 individuals, whom contracted the virus and undergone the experimental treatment, recovered and were released from the hospital within 48 hours. Our hope is that during the following phases of the trials, the treatment will continue to be successful and thus soon, alongside the COVID-19 vaccine, we will have developed a treatment, which can cure from the virus, and in time end this pandemic.

We still face many challenges, and we can learn a great deal from our Vietnamese friends on how to achieve peace and conciliation with our neighboring countries. In the last years, we made a significant step in that direction, and after many years maintaining peace with two Arab countries – Egypt and Jordan, we have now succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with four more – UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. This is a tremendous development for us and for the Middle East. However, we are still longing for the day we will achieve long lasting peace with all the countries in the region.

On July 12, 1993, Israel established diplomatic relations with Việt Nam, inaugurating the Israeli Embassy in Hanoi for the first time the same year. Israel was very proud to have established relations with Việt Nam, greatly admiring the spirit of the brave Vietnamese people. During our short journey together, in less than 28 years, we accomplished many achievements. We have learned to get to know each other. Top leaders and officials from both sides have exchanged visits, our trade has been steadily growing, and soon, I hope, we will be able to sign a Free Trade Agreement.

We cooperate with Việt Nam in agriculture, water management, education, innovation and start-up, science and defence. Israeli tourists, who flocked to Việt Nam in large numbers, are eagerly waiting for the sky to be open again so that they can visit this beautiful country. This is why direct flights between the two countries are also on our agenda. There is a great curiosity amongst Vietnamese and Israeli alike about each other’s cultural heritage. Today, Israel sees Việt Nam as a strategic partner for the future, and intends to further advance the relations greatly. It is our hope and belief that Việt Nam sees Israel in the same way. VNS