Blue Cat

Was a documentary I watched about a small town in East Anglia called Wisbech. There is a high number of Polish/Croatian etc immigrants in the town and the local Brits were kicking up a fuss saying that they have taken the jobs that the Brits should do.

Local TV company talked three local employers into giving three of their immigrant employees a few days off and replacing them with local people. It was a disaster. The first scenario, a potato packing company, only two turned up out of the three and they couldn't even pack 12 bags into a box and ended up losing the company a fortune. They blamed their Immigrant supervisor saying that they couldn't understand him.

Second case, local curry house. Three people again picked to assist in the running of the restaurant. Two backed out the night before and the third jacked it in at lunchtime.

Third case, local property owner gave local man a chance to re plaster one of his properties. Job wasn't up to standard.

There was also a guy who was assigned to pick asparagus at a local farm. He was useless and jacked it in.

It seemed clear to me that the town of Wisbech does infact need it's Immigrant labour force.

Meow

A frie of mine tells a story of being in a pub in the UK, where a red top reading type bloke was complaining loudly about Poles coming to the UK and taking jobs from British people. Apparently they are willing to work for less and much harder and he should know as he ran a building company and employed them. He didn't see the irony at all!

I also believe that one of the major problems in the UK these days is not immigrants, but lazy Brits who cannot be bothered to get off their backsides and do a decent days work, preferring to claim benefits and watch TV all day. Time the benefits system was sorted out.

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Blue Cat

Amazingly these guys all did seem really keen to work and get off the benefit system. That may well have been for the cameras though. There was a young guy who was living with his parents and getting 60 quid a week for doing nothing. Good pocket money I say. He had been unemployed for 5 years. I think he was the one who failed at being a waiter, big time!

Inselaffen

The poles etc are not so much taking jobs away from Brits, its more taking jobs away from Portugese and other earlier arrivals who are nowhere near as hard working.

The Poles, Czechs etc also have in general a far better general level of education than Brits

shiva

as an intersting mental exercise picture dubai on the day the imigrants left............

co durham boy

...........Lock the gates at the top of the Sheik Zayed road on the way home

lionheart

I used to work in Peterboro and did surveys in Wisbech, the arsehole of the eastern counties. A really horrid place with one of the highest unemployment and juvenile crime rates anywhere.

Blue Cat

there were actually some Portuguese in this Documentary as well.

Blue Cat

a couple at the beginning said they used to pay the highest rates outside of London,that has changed due to unemployement. Pretty looking place though.

Dilmun

...and the last one pulls the plug.......

Hello.Kitty

there was a documentary a few years back about 10 young, white, male Brits "trying" to get a job after a period of unemployment- often their first. Some actually did stick it out, others procrastinated or "couldn't take the pressure" [of turning up to an interview].

Anyhow, a telling point was when the prog interviewed an employment agency and compared the 10 Brits, taking weeks to apply for a single job, to some Polish women who had arrived in the country on a Saturday, and churned out 60 applications on the Monday.

Hi Five

... the formula in most cases is quite simple for me :

For Immigrants :
1. no work = no opportunities = (no food + no clothe + no shelter) = no future

2. work = opportunities = (food + clothe + shelter) = future

We brits can fall back onto the benefits system, and survive ! Don't want to glorify the benefits system .... cause there are many genuine cases where it really helps to make ends meet. So you get my point.

And you've got to hand it to the immigrants to take the initiative and work ..... one example. NHS ... most cleaners are immigrant workers as us Brits would rather be on the dole than get paid for a cleaning job.

Boomhauer

There isn't a starker example of a society stopping dead in its tracks as the Emirates . As much as the pampered and coddled arrogant locals like to treat the menial labor like crap, they couldn't keep remotely the standard of living they have now without the migrant workers.

Inselaffen

not true. as a large number of these immigrants are from the EU they get benefits in the UK.

they are just not as workshy as British benefits scroungers.

Inselaffen

there was another documentary a couple of years ago which looked into the different immigrant groups.

In general the Poles/Czechs were very hard working, family orientated and well educated, often doing jobs below their ability to earn enough to settle and improve their english so they could move up the job ladder.

The Portugese were losing out to eastern europeans for low paid jobs because they were porrly educated and lazy.'

Somalis were just happy to sit back and claim benefits and made little effort to learn english