Eric Pickles’s Curry College

I do as well the idea that people in the UK cannot cook.

But you may have been three years ago when Labour brought in the ban on Asian coming here a restaurant owner came on TV to moan he needed to have Bangladeshi staff only they could serve, only they could cook, he said he needed the people from his country.

Nine weeks later the Immigration and police raided his restaurants one in my town and found every single person he had working were illegal  living in cramped condition all being paid nothing and I mean nothing he took all the money  back for living in accommodation unfit. he was fined he closed his restaurants and left the place, and the best of luck to him.

But the problem is of course like the shops in my town owned by Asian families they have six or seven of the family working, but the shops are so small it would be totally impossible for them to earn enough, but then you find out they are not working, they are paying no tax, or being paid any wages. And that cannot be fair to anyone including the family members.

I think it’s a little more than a few, Mike.  Even back in 2004 there was a Home Office scheme for 10,000 unskilled workers from Bangladesh a year (the article also mentions that the Bangladesh Caterer’s Association said there was a need then for 20,000 more people to work in the sector).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3538436.stm

Unemployment among British Bangladeshis seems to be higher than average:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/01/britain-bangladeshis-number

Of course not everyone will want to work in a curry house, but I don’t imagine the proposed college will try to train 10,000 a year.  

Putting all of that together, I can’t see why this isn’t a good idea.  The college will provide employment and training, graduates will be able to find a job with their new qualification, and employers will get people with the skills they need.  

But then how many of the dishes served in western restaurants are true to the original cultures? Most have been heavily adapted to western tastes and some have been devised locally and have no historic or cultural link.

Also, lets get this in perspective, there are thousands of restaurants serving food of a reasonable quality which is well within the capability of someone given sufficient training. Perhaps Michelin star grade chefs do need to be steeped in the original culture but most UK curry houses are not of this grade.

On a more political note, I would have thought that any business which was run on the basis that it did not invest in training its staff, did not believe in developing young people and relied on bringing in ready trained migrant workers would fall squarely in Ed Miliband’s ‘bad capitalism’ group.