jackytoo

Cos they are stuck there and can't sell

Lushdaddy

Haven't you heard? All the yobs are in England.. All the illiterates are there too, claiming dole. I guess that does make England cheaper, it's FREE..!!

bil

Yeah, only one point I would make on a serious note. How is it that everyone 'knows' how there are all these people claiming shedloads, and yet from personal experience, everytime I have had to claim for anything, I have either been turned down flat or granted a pittance?

SaritaBarcelona

I usually try and keep out of this kind of discussion, but I know from family experience (not myself or my parents!) that there are people who have virtually never worked now getting a pension (albeit low but he has very few costs), housing benefit to help pay already low rent, heating allowance, etc. This particularly family member goes on foreign holidays, and in the same breath criticises foreigners coming over and taking "our jobs"! On the other side of the coin I have another family member who had an accident and genuinely cannot work as he cannot stand for long (he is desperate to do anything but they can't find him anything) and he cannot get much help at all, even though he has a young son. The UK benefits system is so unbelievably flawed, but it looks like the government is starting to wake up and smell the coffee at last. Again, this is a situation that can't be seen in black and white, it isn't as simple as that.

bil

Is that the 'taking our jobs ' as in the programme of that ilk?

That showed quite nicely how few British unemployed were prepared to a) raise a finger, or b) when they did, work half as hard as the immigrants did.

Usual caveats, probably a sensationalist programme, small xsection of the population yada yada, but when I was looking to employ people I would automatically reject any candidates from the jobcentre as they all without exception weren't interested.

steviedeluxe

Problem is, in the past there were plenty of menial jobs in factories/shops to soak up those who weren't very efficient. Nowadays the factory isn't there, or it's been outsourced abroad, or they just need highly skilled people. The shops will often prefer to hire highly-motivated Eastern Eurpean migrants - in a sense you can't blame them and those two parties gain at the expense of the local. It leaves the local workforce often left high and dry, and it's easy to lose confidence as well as motivation when you've been unemployed for a while.

bil

Hmmm. The only one with a qualification in carpentry did very well. Two in a potato packing factory managed to just about keep up with the foreign workers in the highly skilled techniques of putting 12 packs of potatoes into each crate. (took them a couple of days to do that....)
The rest, well half of them couldn't be *rsed to turn up, and the rest weren't capable of cutting asparagus half as well as immigrants.

All in all, fairly pathetic.

I agree about people losing confidence, but on the whole they came across as cocky workshy wastes of space. Loss of confidence is one thing, but these were pretty full of themselves.

thestens

I like the sea too - house in Santiago de la Ribera - lovely to walk along the sea front early in the morning in the sun when you know it will be cold and grey in UK!!

JLFS

Not everyone is workshy, I know a man who has been out of work for years, he has been trying to find a job in his speciality, but it has been very tough for him and still no luck.
He is a wringer outer for a one armed window cleaner.....he is even willing to re locate, but times are hard.....

superskib

I live in Lincs, the cabbage county of England. I see people working in the fields in sub zero weather, up to their arse in mud, hands red raw; how many of you lot would work in those conditions for piss poor wages below the minimum wage?

The employers love the Poles and Portuguese because they don't/can't complain about the shit conditions. Walk a mile in their shoes mate.

rugbymatt

To be fair.... I don't think many of would want to live in Lincs!

bil

Underpayment is illegal, pure and simple. The programme showed quite clearly the the English workers were almost all diffident, and not willing to apply themselves to the work. The immigrants working on the asparagrus had realised a simple fact that on piecework, fast and good earns a substantial wage packet. The English workers were obviously never going to be as good as them as they lacked practice. BUT, and it's a big but, they clearly showed that they didn't give a toss.

As for walking a mile, I have been in the position of taking people on to work for me in a small business. In all honesty. in the 30 years that I ran the business, I never found a single jobcentre applicant that was interested in actually getting a job, and of the 15 or more people we took on (non jobcentre), only 3 or so were ever really worth employing. The rest all turned out to be useless, dishonest, or outright thieves.

superskib

[QUOTE=As for walking a mile, I have been in the position of taking people on to work for me in a small business. In all honesty. in the 30 years that I ran the business, I never found a single jobcentre applicant that was interested in actually getting a job, and of the 15 or more people we took on (non jobcentre), only 3 or so were ever really worth employing. The rest all turned out to be useless, dishonest, or outright thieves.
[/QUOTE]

I ran my own business for twenty years in the building industry – hardly a feather bed – and only had one employee who was a pain in the arse (he was a recovering alcoholic and went off the rails). Either you were expecting miracles or you may have been a rubbish employer.

I well remember my Dad telling me when I letf school "the only good employer is the one you see in the mirror every morning"

agoreira

"Only three any good" (don't know what percentage that is) I wouldn't have thought that was representative of the general working public. Yes, I've worked with some absolute deadbeats, but I'd think the vast majority were very good workers. Think you might have been unlucky, Bil! Surely it can't have been the second option?

Madridboy

What an odd statement to make about someone you don´t know!

Had exactly the same problems with staff in the UK and in Spain. The only one I thought that was any good over here (who was also paid well over the odds for her work) then tried to blackmail me into putting her onto a contract as she was pregnant!