I'd rather sign on than earn £7 an hour, says it all really.

[Grumpmeister]

If you are unhappy with the amount of foreign labour coming into your community then there is a siomple solution. Get your bone idle dole scrounging oxygen thieves off their lardy arses and into work! 

High wages have drawn scores of Eastern Europeans to at least one corner of England. But not everyone welcomes this new workforce even if unemployed locals themselves refuse to do the same jobs.
A slice of today's British countryside. Giant butternut squash nestle in the ground waiting to be plucked and dispatched to satisfy gastropub tastes. Half a dozen workers trudge behind a tractor bending down to pick and load the squash. And the only person in the field who's British is the bloke driving the tractor. The rest are all from Eastern Europe.

The crew of Latvians, Lithuanians and a Pole includes a former nurse who's earning four times what she was making in the hospital back home. It's monotonous, physical work with 60-hour weeks, but no-one's complaining - or taking a tea break.

"It's wonderful here," says Mariusz, fresh in from Poland.

A dream workforce for the farmer surveying the workers toiling on his land outside Peterborough. "We have a job to get anyone else to do the work."

He has all but given up on using locals to work in the fields. "They don't work as hard."

In fact, they barely work in the fields at all. The agency supplying this farm with labour has had hundreds of Eastern Europeans pass through its doors in the last two years - and all of three English people.

"We've a job to get anybody else to do the work," says farmer Cam Allan. "The rates of pay are above minimum wage. It's just finding the people to do this type of work we've got."

The agricultural sector would be in dire straits without the immigrants willing to do the hard graft on the land. Labour which can net workers up to £25,000-a-year with overtime.

'Prefer to sign-on'

But that's not enough to entice some of the local lads picking up their dole money in Peterborough. A constant trickle of young men are in and out of the office collecting their state benefits. But there's little appetite for taking one of those vegetable-picking jobs of up to £7-an-hour. One group of lads:


Job for £7 an hour - "I prefer to sign on than do that"
"No mate I'd prefer to sign-on than do that."

"I don't want to work in like no cornfield."

"I don't want to work with a load of foreigners."

Another lad is picking up his last benefits cheque. He's just got a job after 12 months of searching. "I think because of all the foreigners" he says. "I know people don't like it, but I've never had trouble getting a job before. I've been going for jobs and they've got over 200 people applying for them."

The problem is that while you are actively looking for work there are loads of others who are more than content to sit on their arses claiming benefit even though they could earn far more by working. Thats why there is immigration, to make up for the bone idle scroungers that this government are happy to subsidise at our expense as it guarrantees them votes at the next election.

The massive influx of Eastern Europeans may be keeping parts of the economy afloat, but is there a social cost?

Britain has experienced its biggest wave of migration in centuries in recent years. No-one really knows how many Eastern Europeans have come to Britain. The official figure is 800,000.

One in 10

A fair few have ended up in Peterborough - enticed by the demand for farming and factory work. Immigrants now make up around one in 10 of the city's population. Some locals say Peterborough is creaking under the pressure.

Charles Swift has been a local councillor for 55 years. As leader of the city council in the early 1970s, he agreed to house Asian families who had been forcibly expelled from Uganda - prompting National Front pickets against him.

But the councillor feels this latest influx has gone too far - with not enough government money to recognise the real scale and impact of the recent immigration.

He points out the local GP surgery which has received a thousand immigrant patients in the last six months and a primary school coping with 24 languages.

"The ordinary chappie in the street, if you stop and talk to them, they're right pig-sick, fed up to the teeth. They can see standards deteriorating all the way round and they repeatedly say to you 'enough is enough Charles. We've had enough of it'."

Putting down roots

Resident Hema Patel agrees. "They should put a stop to immigration totally," she says "...whether they be Europeans, from the Far East, whatever. And they should sort out the problems now."

The local farmers and factory owners would say Peterborough hasn't had enough of it. They're still short of labour. But with immigration it's hard to see beyond the particular impact it's having on your immediate life - and that impact will be very different between a boss trying to keep his business afloat and someone whose street has become a magnet for immigrants.

What's striking in Peterborough is how many of the recent migrants are actually here for the long haul - and not just a year of two to make some money and head home

In a church hall, a Polish politician addresses a room full of his countrymen - seeing whether any might be tempted back home to a country now short of workers.

Out of the whole room, only one Pole says she is considering going back home. The rest are here to stay.

One young mother says, "I've a flat here now and my children are with me. They're at school and have made friends here. So I couldn't go back to Poland now - even if the situation there improved very quickly."

[chuntering again]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7280000/newsid_7283600/7283686.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&nol_storyid=7283686&bbcws=1

Feckless buggers indeed. Nonetheless, part of the problem is British employers are able to demand sixty hour weeks thanks to Kermit's opt-out clause to the Working Time Directive. To Poles and Lithuanians, supporting families back home, sixty hours a week at £7 an hour is a complete money-spinner, to local kids it is much less appealing.

[ice and a slice]

A friend has just moved back to the UK with her 2 children (single parent).  She's been offered a couple of jobs but finds she's better off on benefit.  Same old same old!

Here in sunny Cyprus there's no such thing as benefit like this so everyone has to work whether they like it or not!  You will see old ladies working on roads as they have no family to look after them - a strange sight.  A balance is needed methinks.

[Mr Happy]

My sentiments on the work-shy have been outlined time and again.  Take the £28k I earn, deduct a modest mortgage for a modest family dwelling (I say modest but as with all property at preset it is over-priced), deduct £250 a month to travel to work i conditions not suitable legally for cattle, minus tax, national insurance, and council tax.  Minus 60+ hours away from home each week.

What's left?

Enough that I can have the odd beer out, pre budget anyway; the children get trips out and an acceptable level of birthday presents to suit consumer Britain and I get to put a measly amount by (£50 pcm) towards when I'm incapable.

Meaning:

The wife has to work hence much tiredness and little time together or spending one to one with the kids.

The flipside:

The outlaws and their career in defrauding the taxpayer.  Living in a more affluent area paying no a jot to rent their superior house or contributing to the council not collecting their rubbish.  Earning enough to smoke and drink daily, run a car to collect said fags and booze.  Rewarded for each unloved sprog they unfortunately bring into the world ad enough time to ensure the kids are suitably mis-treated.

My Policy:

One months beefit to be earned per 12 months of work.  Benefit is not available to those under 21.  If you are unemployed for >6 months, I will find you a job.  Shovelling dog shit, helping the elderly, crash test dummy, whatever.  Whilst unemployed further production of sprog will be rewarded with a disapprovig shake of the head.

Revolution not Evolution, Stop the Scum!

[Darwins Selection]

My sentiments on the work-shy have been outlined time and again.  Take the £28k I earn, deduct a modest mortgage for a modest family dwelling (I say modest but as with all property at preset it is over-priced), deduct £250 a month to travel to work i conditions not suitable legally for cattle, minus tax, national insurance, and council tax.  Minus 60+ hours away from home each week.

What's left?

Enough that I can have the odd beer out, pre budget anyway; the children get trips out and an acceptable level of birthday presents to suit consumer Britain and I get to put a measly amount by (£50 pcm) towards when I'm incapable.

Meaning:

The wife has to work hence much tiredness and little time together or spending one to one with the kids.

The flipside:

The outlaws and their career in defrauding the taxpayer.  Living in a more affluent area paying no a jot to rent their superior house or contributing to the council not collecting their rubbish.  Earning enough to smoke and drink daily, run a car to collect said fags and booze.  Rewarded for each unloved sprog they unfortunately bring into the world ad enough time to ensure the kids are suitably mis-treated.

My Policy:

One months beefit to be earned per 12 months of work.  Benefit is not available to those under 21.  If you are unemployed for >6 months, I will find you a job.  Shovelling dog shit, helping the elderly, crash test dummy, whatever.  Whilst unemployed further production of sprog will be rewarded with a disapprovig shake of the head.

Revolution not Evolution, Stop the Scum!

[Grumpmeister]

IIRC there have been stories in the news lately about the MOD declaring a shortage of manpower so I would recommend bringing back national service to out those bone idle scroungers to some decent use.