You have to look at the mentality of his critics when its considered a problem he blamed football hooligans rather than police trying to stop football hooligans, vandals and the like. This is the mentality that the hooligans are not responsible or are a kind of 'subhuman' a 'poor' that is more like an animal that just 'does what it does' whereas the police are a full human owner with the expectation of managing the pets.

Anyways, I think people can 'get' what he was trying to communicate which is that the UK probably needs far less people who are working part-time + government subsidy / social service schemes etc. There are already enough Brits who work very long hours and do so with great efficiency and ideally we'd like to see things start to balance out as far as that goes.

Now, where he just kinda screwed up was that he was relating 'the Chinese' to being like his wife. Indeed my Chinese wife could not fucking be stopped working any and every job when she got to Canada. He might be thinking of Hong Kong Chinese and maybe Taiwanese and was thinking of Japanese Office Men and other better examples.

Now... PRC China and its almost no comparison. I have seriously never seen so many people dicking around as in China. I mean just offices full of people doing fuck all or doing it so slowly, inefficiently and with such incompetence that it boggles my mind that the country runs at all. I mean its mind-boggling ot me. Yes, people 'work' long hours because they leave for work at 5am by noon go on 3 hour lunch breaks and then chat and dick around on iphones or whatever the hell for 3 more hours.

So I think I 'get' what he was trying to communicate and most people got the idea even though its not accurate in practice but in perception - the meaning and point was there.