What got my goat, and several other farm species, was - in our local paper, that ran the story about this loser - in the next column, was a longer 'piece' about a woman who had defrauded a company out of a couple of million quid, without being caught - no one questioned her lifestyle (exotic holidays 3 times a year), the porche and ferrari that she owned - yet they were all supposed to be on equal pay. She got 5 years, so will be out in 2.5. The loser who defiled the woman in the street got 3 years - so he'll be out raising a finger to the law by Christmas 2008. What is wrong with our justice system? And, why weren't the 'observers' of his crime done for aiding and abetting?
Just a quick off-topic comment. Have you actually tried to replace them?
V
The short answer is yes. My first job consisted mainly of cleaning up people who had been incontinent, and washing urine bottles and bedpans. After six months they got around to giving me a few day's training. On arrival at the class, out of forty or so people I was the only white face in the room.
Those were the days!
Having said which, a lot of low paid jobs are a lot worse than they need to be, due to the ignorance, callousness, and stupidity of management. RSI for instance is avoidable, but it requires change in working practices. In the job for which I am presently training, RSI is a real danger, but they are careful to teach us how to avoid it and provide approapriate seating etc which helps. However that is a professional job, professional workers are generally more valued because it takes money to train them, whereas with unskilled workers there are "plenty more where they came from."
The answer to this problem is of course Trades Unions, because unskilled workers have no power whatsoever as individuals, only collectively. (Of course all employees should join unions, but unskilled low paid workers are especially in need of them).
The short answer is yes. My first job consisted mainly of cleaning up people who had been incontinent, and washing urine bottles and bedpans. After six months they got around to giving me a few day's training. On arrival at the class, out of forty or so people I was the only white face in the room.
Point taken!
i havent click on this link as i dont know what it is and dont want to see if it is really upsetting, so can someone give a brief outline of what it is?
Hi swhypno,
I've enjoyed your posts. Can I address this one from quite some days or more back? It's a bit off-topic from the first post, but it's where the thread went.
The topic is not immigrants per se, but if the topic is 'our culture and what is going wrong' then even academically it would be inconceivable not to address this topic; though I've already posted that immigration may not be even half the problem. But might it become so? ...
There have always been, and will always be, a minority of low-grade people who will do such things if they can get away with it. The difference nowadays is that they think they CAN get away with it, whereas in former times they would not have.
Agreed. I'm really not sure of the answer as that would normally be provided at the polling booth, but that comes around rarely, people are swayed by spin when it does happen, and no party is very radical now. They are quite close together.
Some kind of rot set into this country, maybe as far back as the 1950s, and it has got steadily worse ever since.
I wouldn't put it back that far, or even into the 1960s. Just my opinion.
This national decline has many symptoms, including, for instance, the fact that we now have to have 600,000 East Europeans here to do the kinds of work for which all too many English people are too lazy, feckless, unskilled and illiterate.
Since you wrote that, your post has been updated by fact. The different estimates are now bewildering, but is it, maybe 1.5 million at least? Today I passed a headline saying, "All new jobs have gone to East European immigrants." [Meaning statistically.]
It's not the fault of the East Europeans of course. Why shouldn't they try to better themselves? Brussels and indeed 10 Downing Street seems to have no appreciation that every nation is different - I travelled in most of them from the 1970s. It's hard to begrudge the Polish, for example, as before the Soviets took their land, they were similar people to oursleves and remain so somewhat. But the further East you go, past every border people are more and more different from ourselves. We have precious little in common with Romania, Bulgaria - Turkey next? - but many Poles are similar to us in outlook. [That still doesn't mean strong measures couldn't be put in place to stop more coming: the plain fact is that each Euro immigrant arriving here statistically downturns our own personal economic wealth, quite contrary to how government statements say ...
[and statements from Brown such as "British jobs for British people." How politically triped up that catch-phrase is ....]
On the unskilled, lazy, etc., words of yours, referring to displaced UK workers, I beg to differ. In 2005-6 I lived mainly in Somerset. Poles took the few available jobs there, such as on production lines. These were actually very precious jobs in the area, as people could resort to them. But suddenly, since 2005, they are largely filled up. As for minimum wage, without East European immigrants, it's a simple law of economics that if a job really needs to get done, and nobody takes it, the wage goes up. East Europeans work at low wages, so those in the UK who could take these jobs up find themselves priced-down as workers. The Poles of Somerset were certainly illiterate so far as English goes - all locals were better and few were lazy, etc. They were just priced and pushed out of casual on-going low-paid work by immigrants.
This problem goes back decades to the fact that we have joined the EU so fully IMHO.
I did sample a very brief spell of this kind of work while in Somerset, as it was common in my area to take short spells as an employee at low wages almost just as a 'change', and since vacancies were so low there. I can only call it virtual slave labour. But I was iliterate [what a typo!] - since I couldn't talk to anyone: they were almost all Poles. The way the economy worked there, I saw, was that these casual-labour jobs were always taken up by Brits before, in Somerset, by people in need of a few weeks of regular pay, or even (as I met) by qualified self-employed people who did it each year for some weeks as a 'change', and guaranteed income. They were never left vacant. They lost all this with the Poles coming in.
Somerset people weren't even used to too many outsiders with different accents. Even I was an 'outsider'. They went back generations in my area, together. This sudden influx had peoples' hackles rising.
Yet I do have 'sympathy' for the Poles. They really are so very alike to us in outlook. But in this small island: the problem is, who next? It has to stop. A nation has to retain some cultural identity, and this then holds in check many societal problems. Society itself might deal with them.
There are experiments with rats in confined spaces where, beyond a certain number per square yard of space, all normal social behaviour breaks down. And we are just an island.
If you look at history, you will see that nations are like people. They are born and they die, and before they die they go through a long or short period of sickness and decline. However it may be that, unlike an individual, a nation can revive itself. China, for instance, was on its last legs a hundred years ago, held in contempt by the world. Yet China, for all its faults, is now probably the second strongest country in the world
I see the point, but I actually believe that largely nations make or break their own destinies by their voting, apathy, activity, sense of purpose, and so on. China was in an awful period during the cultural revolution just back in the 60s, but rejected that. The UK can still reject some of our EU membership, tighten borders, tighten policing (without it making the police authoritarian), but largely through new initiatives of social change which must come from the grass roots. I think we can forget politicians making these changes, or that they'll do it if things become a grass-roots movement ... just as example, the healthy eating in schools by Jamie Oliver which I still believe was a great initiative.
V
This is truly shocking and I am amaze how cruel can a person be with a helpless woman.
Yes, it is really upsetting, and no, one cant give a 'brief outline' without revealing the hateful details.