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Eric Pickles’s Curry College

November 18, 2011 4:53 pm

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“The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, is to make a UK curry college to teach British workers the secret of perfect pakoras, a showpiece of the government’s integration strategy to be published shortly.

Pickles’s “curry college”, as it is being called, would see the government backing a school to train British people from all backgrounds to become chefs specialising in Indian food as an answer to the crisis in the £3.2bn curry industry triggered by the Home Office’s ban on bringing in chefs from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

The scheme is directly in line with Conservative policy to make deep cuts in immigration numbers on the basis “that we do not need to attract people to do jobs that could be carried out by British citizens, given the right training and support”.”

We know Eric is a huge curry fan – but is that really a basis for government policy…?

http://twitter.com/oliver_segal Oliver Frank Segal

hate to say it but it is a good policy.
- Anonymous
  
  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.
  - http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9
    
    And what do you call Workfare, for reference?
    - Anonymous
      
      Waste of time.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

There is something about the provenance of food and implementation of ingrained cultures which no ‘college’ could replace. How many people actually come here to work in Asian restaurants? Hardly enough to greatly affect the immigration figures. A local Italian restaurant near us ended up replacing their Italian staff with Poles. The food ended up notably lacking in authenticity
- jaime taurosangastre candelas
  
  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.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
    
    And the food will be rubbish, so people won’t go. Stupid idea
    - jaime taurosangastre candelas
      
      @facebook-510980099:disqus Mike Homfray
      
      Why do you say that? I’m sure that in practice 95%+ of those trained who go on to work in curry houses will be ethnically south Asian and will certainly have grown up in a south Asian culture, either in the UK or abroad. From the second link I gave, 80% of all UK’s Indian restaurants are run by Bangladeshis, so there probably wouldn’t be any difference in the taste of the food.
      It think it’s a good idea, and further to my initial post, I’m sure that underlying standards in food preparation and hygiene would be taught on the course, so there may be an overall increase in those areas as well in comparison with those who are entirely self-taught.
      - http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9
        
        The concept you need a collage to teach food preparation is very much the kind of nonsense qualification which I’d expect a TORY government to be cracking down on.
        
        It’s very much the sort of thing which should be learned on the job as an NVQ. (Including, yes, food hygiene)
        
        And I find the concept of “standards” in making types of food downright creepy.
- Anonymous
  
  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.
  - Ralph Berry
    
    Mike i can attest to the quality, it can be done, including by Zimbabwean and local ‘white’ trainees.Its unacceptable for the levels of structural unemployment in the communities I represent, if this secures employment , which it can do, then its got to be made to work. The other posts above point to the appalling unemployment rates in some communities, this may also make a pretty exploitative industry invest in local people. I’d call that a good idea.
Ralph Berry

Not new..It has been worked on locally in Bradford out of practical necessity. Omar Khan and a few others have been working on a Studio School to train local people to become qualified Curry Chefs..we have 1000′s of young people without work and a good few so far have bene taken from destitution to get skilled work. There is also a pretty gruesome record of exploitation in the use of ‘imported’ workers.As a Bradford Councillor I am not easily going to praise Pickles,here he has been a magpie and filched a local idea..
http://twitter.com/tommilleruk Tom Miller

It’s literally this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB0ZOu_EZ2M

“I like curry. But now that we’ve got the recipe, do they really have to stay?”
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