Thursday, Mar 13, 2008
There goes another demand component
BBC: Soaring pay lures Poles back home
The long hours and low wages eventually took their toll, and she decided to head home.
Posted by doomwatch @ 09:59 AM (1699 views) Add Comment
30 Comments
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1. Landedgentry said...
Dear oh dear, that was a significant fundamental that BTL's relied on. Time for extended void periods BTLs!!!, with the mortgage meter is still running. MWWAHAHAHAHA AHAHA HAHAHAHA HAAH AHA AA HA!!!
2. renting2 said...
Met a nice young polish girl the other day, she was moaning that Britain was no longer the country she came to love in 2000. She thought we weren't being 'British' anymore, 'too many foreigners' she said.
Another young Polish guy, very polite, hard working and dedicated, has been made redundant and is planning to go back as he is finding it hard to get another job.
3. Kirsty said...
Its not only the poles that are here though.
4. harold said...
Next the government will be claiming that they've solved the immigration and housing 'crisis'.
5. whiteknight said...
really?!
I can scarcely contain my surpise.
You mean -- when the money has gone - it wont be worth working here.
Go on... surely not.
6. wage slave said...
Yet another nail in the coffin for the BTL brigade. Shame.
7. Titaniccaptain said...
What happens to the housing market if all the immigrants go home? (hhmmmmm let me think b.t.l.ers). Cant blame them for wanting a better life its what we all strive for......i.e. if Norway gave a lifestyle way above and beyond that of u.k. and opportunities that we dont get here, there would be a mass exodus....hang on Norway is better...see you in Dover guys...................my Viking name is now "Erichjahhhnerston the unpronouncable".
But seriously if there is an immigration problem its not the eastern europeans fault its our government.......If a life boat gets too full..it sinks simple as that and yes what is it to be british these days? what is it that makes us stand out in the 21st century? our culture has eroded away, the roots and values that once held us up which were inherited from christian (over the past 200 years, paganism before that which has had much less of an impact) values have been dug up for us to accommodate the multi faith system for the immigrants that have come here (even though alot of the Polish are either Catholic or christian)....but yet again not their fault....Once apon a time Saxaons and Normans were the immigrants and loathed at that. And most of the so called indiginous people of Britain are of Immigrant descendancy ....in my lifetime the Irish were frowned upon and Germans in the generation before that. I see alot of comments on the immigration link to housing problems and there is almost certainly a link how big the impact is difficult to measure as for blame.....No 10 downing street. People should not be ostricised for trying to get on in life. If they have been told the streets are paved with gold then they are also victims of a con.
8. montesquieu said...
Pity. Some of the women are gorgeous.
I hope supermarkets keep selling the food though - the smoked ham is perfect for making soup, the sausages are great too.
9. jack c said...
Lots of Polish bus drivers in the North of England - most have a basic grasp of the English language - every journey no matter how long or short "Pound please" it will be a disaster if they pack up and go home - they have unknowingly revolutionised public transport
10. Mr Plumbase said...
A middle aged Romanian chappy who has become a good friend of mine is having second thoughts as well, he was in his countrys airforce at quite a senior level, he speaks six languages,is an absolute genius on these computer thingys and has a physics degree, and yet the only employment he can get are the minimum wage factory/farm jobs, once a potential employer hears his accent he thinks cheap labour.
11. mark wadsworth said...
What Montesqieu says.
12. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.
13. hpwatcher said...
I'm glad that many have chosen to go back. The government simply didn't have a clue what they were doing in letting so many people come in, without any idea of the numbers, without any idea of whether the infrastructure of the UK would be able to cope i.e. hospitals etc. Clearly a government that was ignorant, incompetent and arrogant.
Perhaps the government thinks they have served their purpose.....remember in 2004 when many Pols started arriving the economy was slowing down, housing was stagnating. These workers basically revived the economy and in particular the housing market.
It's very, very different from 2004 now. Recession time for UK
14. Stevie Dee said...
Well, we can always take in all the refugees from Darfur. This labour government will stop at no expense to bring anyone in, like a desperate BTLer filling their flat like a 17th Century "Slave Boat".
15. nopensionnohouse said...
If immigration was good for the economy then emigration must be bad!
Erm, not looking good is it?
16. Friendsofderek said...
The BBC has a story earlier in the week about Poles working in farms in England. It mentioned a Polish mp had been over trying to get people to return to Poland due to a worker shortage. Only one out of the dozens of workers was planning to return, the others planned to settle here.
17. montesquieu said...
@HP watcher
I go with cynicism rather than incompetence. Having heavily supported EU expansion (in part to break the Franco-German stranglehold over EU decision-making, through enlargement, in particular supporting Polish entry with its sizeable population) the Government would have found it very political difficult at the time within the EU to then restrict immigration (which was perfectly possible as it did, of course, do later with Romania).
The government knew full well the numbers would be far greater than the 15,000 or whatever it was that was stated, so were rather duplicious about that, but no-one (not even anti-immigration apocalyptic doom merchants) were predicting 800,000. No society can absorb that level of influx without strain and I think we are seeing the outcome of that (as well as the economic downturn) as people pack up and go home.
Of course if the white working classes would get off their arses, stop sitting around drinking cider, talking drugs and reading celebrity magazines, get an education and be prepared to risk coming off benefits to do some work for a living, so many immigrants might not have been drawn here in the first place.
Personally I think immigration is generally a good thing: who will pay my pension in 20 years' time? We are far, far below population replacement rate and if we don't get more people in and make them welcome, our decline as a nation will be well and truly terminal. I'd rather see us actively encourage immigation AND SETTLEMENT from hard-working Poles - or from outside the EU, well-educated and even harder-working Chinese - than go with old patterns of allowing in often illiterate people from 'usual suspect' countries, who then refuse to integrate into the British way of life.
Actually in this context the new points-based immigation system, as well as planned changes around naturalisation and citizenship rules, are quite sensible measures.
If white Britain is to be watered down who is to blame?
18. Montesquieu said...
My point about watering down needs amplification - this is about population decline. If the middle classes in particular are too selfish to breed, then immigration is the only answer to keep us strong as a nation. If the consequence of that is that Britain's character changes, well that's a long-established feature of our history.
19. Stevie Dee said...
@montiesquieu,
"who will pay my pension in 20 years' time?"
Unfortunately nobody because we will all be skint. You just have to ask yourself the question, what happened before pensions. Yes, it was "family values", the same values the current & previous administrations have set about "breaking down".
As for immigration, I do support it, but controlled & legitimate, but for so long the British public have been played. So I don't blame the immigrant as this is natural "self interest". Instead the blame is attributable to our masters, the government who have thrown the public a "googly".
20. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
Before anyone assumes that we have to encourage immigration to sort out not having a 2.1 birthrate, lets just find out why we don't have a 2.1 birthrate and deal with that.
Certainly the very high cost of living that we have now got to will do nothing to encourage anything like 2.1.
Immigration, as with the Poles and any others, is not the fix. They can just get up and go home. Then where does that leave you with your pension in 20 years?
The vast majority of people in this country want to have a stable home before they start a family, that usually means owning your own home. Ok, so in many other parts of the world that is not the case, but it is here and it will be for a long time to come.
The Poles want that as much as we do. That is probably a good reason for them to leave this country right now.
21. hpwatcher said...
Personally I think immigration is generally a good thing: who will pay my pension in 20 years' time? We are far, far below population replacement rate and if we don't get more people in and make them welcome, our decline as a nation will be well and truly terminal. I'd rather see us actively encourage immigation AND SETTLEMENT from hard-working Poles - or from outside the EU, well-educated and even harder-working Chinese - than go with old patterns of allowing in often illiterate people from 'usual suspect' countries, who then refuse to integrate into the British way of life.
I don't accept any of that. I think it rather selfish to think of these folks as nothing other that the people who are going to pay your persion. Moreover, UK is in decline anyway, due to the emerging powers of India and China. What do you think the recession is all about? It's isn't just about the credit crunch, but also the demise of western industry. The economies are severly overvalued in terms of the lack of their ''real'' wealth...there isn't much; this is what the gold/oil rush is all about. Paper money is an abstraction and effectively valueless.
white Britain
It simply isn't just an ethnic issue.
22. Titaniccaptain said...
you can see that this is a very contentious topic by the reactions here...
23. montesquieu said...
@hpwatcher
Been to the old East Germany lately? Decay is rampant, the people are gone (at least, all the more-educated, aspirational young people, especially women) leaving only dumb, angry young men (increasily attracted to far-right politics) and old people living off the state.
Without a better-than-replacement birthrate - or imigration - that's where we are going, too. More than 20% of British women now never have children (up from under 5% 40 years ago), increasing numbers of couples remain childless by choice. Many of these are perfectly comfortable, they are just being selfish/don't want the trouble of bringing up kids. If it was about poverty then the poor would have fewer kids than the middle classes not the other way around.
Anyway these people are a lost cause. Only by encouraging immigration (from the right people) can we save this country from oblivion in 20-30 years' time. We should watch with interest what's happening in Japan, as they are 10-15 years ahead of us.
24. justwatching said...
Montesquieu
Poor, poverty? Do they not procreate like rabbits because they don't have to worry about the cost of bringing up children. Its called benefits. Don't worry, the tax payer will look after your multiple offspring.
25. hpwatcher said...
Anyway these people are a lost cause. Only by encouraging immigration (from the right people) can we save this country from oblivion in 20-30 years' time.
Well, I would never think of anyone being a lost cause; but these places may have been stripped of their best workers. They may have left to come to UK to be exploited by greedy business leaders? In any event, the fact is that the UK infrastructure simply isn't able to cope with all of these extra people. You can forget catching a bus, tube in London rush hour...the trains are far too packed......Or is it that all you concerned about is getting your pension, which may well have been abolished by then anyway.
26. hpwatcher said...
Sorry forgot to put a closing tag in.
27. cyril said...
This is the much vaunted 'flexible labour market' in operation. They have served their purpose, to keep wages down and make life easier for the middle classes. Bye bye.
28. Crashwatcher said...
The Poles were only ever Migrant workers - here to make a bit more money than they could back home - until things improve as they are at the moment. Anyway everyone knows they wouldn't fit in with British society - they are far too polite, hardworking, frugal, freindly and christian - they need to far more lazy, spendthrift, zenophobic and vulgar to fit in with modern british culture. They behave like our parents did 50 years ago. Its not suprising they want to go back to a civilised country.
29. montesquieu said...
@hpwatcher
I don't really get your point? You are anti-immigration, full-stop? A bit backward in the year 2008 don't you think? People globally are becoming more mobile (especially people with a bit of ambition and aspiration), that's just how the world is. Get over it.
I lived abroad myself for several years and didn't see myself as part of a tide of ungrateful migrants pleading for special treatment (though Brits in that country could well be painted as such), just as someone having a life experience somewhere else, paying my taxes and contributing to society. What's so bad about that? (But I guess I made the traffic jams marginally worse). That's all many of those people crowding into those London tubes are doing. Though personally I think London has always been a dump, and always a special case - there's nothing much wrong with the 'infrastructure' in most of the west country, where I live, though banning caravans on the M5 in the summer would certainly help road congestion.
But say you did ban immigration, and fill a few hundred jumbos full of 'unwanted' migrants to send them 'home'. Then what are you going to do when an ever-increasing proportion of elderly people (ratio down from 10 workers per pensioner to two or three), alongside an overall population collapse, means the tax take evaporates, just as health and social services liabilities increase? Serious question. Answers on a postcard ....
30. hpwatcher said...
You are anti-immigration, full-stop? A bit backward in the year 2008 don't you think?
Don't be so patronising. And you haven't read or at least thought about anything that I have written have you?
I believe immigration is fine, providing the infrastructure is able to take the strain. Most of my closest friends are Asian, and these guys have worked hard and really have a lot to offer. They aren't able to enter the UK unless, there is a job specifically for them. There have integrated well into the UK and have lots of UK folks amongst their friends.
It's clear, to me, that you are one of these awful liberals who think immigration, unrestricted & uncontrolled is perfectly fine. Well, I just don't think it is. The population has not been able to assimilate the large amounts of people now entering the UK, the result of that is 'hot spots', a form of voluntary segregation....not that can't be good for anybody?