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Where is Cedar Court? £155k sounds quite 'cheap' for a flat in St Albans?

Do you have any examples of Poles being paid less than a local in the same company in the same job? If so, when they find their feet and improve their standard of English they'll look for a better job with the added credibility of showing a working history in the UK. I've heard some real horror stories from the agriculture industry, but with Polish language newspapers becoming more widespread and the unions starting to involve themselves with migrant workers I can't imagine it will be long before there are a stream of claims against employers by people who've moved onto other employment and fancy a big backpay cheque. That being said, the illegal, low pay market is about to be innundated with Bulgarians.... Very true - I'm starting to see Polish workers move into office and supervisory positions in the (blue collar) company I work for. There must be a huge number of smart, well educated people who have been limited to bar and labouring work whilst they improve their English who are now able to take better positions.

Whats so strange about Laurejons statement? Strikes me as being true - I've seen plenty of people accept low paid work enthusiatically to get a foothold and prove themselves. Lots of graduates seem delighted to borrow money to do an MSc - why not take an entry level job and see where it takes you? I was out with friends in London last night. They were paying their baby sitter £8/hr (cash in hand) for eight hours work and also coughing up for her taxi home (approx £15). Looks better than a McJob.

What makes you think he isn't?

Why cant they get some of the doleites to do the work?

I need to go flathunting in the next couple of months as my flatmate is moving in with his girlfriend and I don't fancy paying the rent on my current place by myself. I'm a bit fed up of moving so would like to find somewhere with a bit of longer term security this time. I've always rented on 6 month AST's before - any idea if it is possible to sign up for a longer period?

Our landlords houses unfortunately Do you think that the increasing numbers of female Eastern European immigrants will challenge these British womens queen bee behavior?

I also look forward to the future 'Hello' style documentary where the BTL celebs discuss their financial losses. Robbie Fowler would be my favoured subject. Any pleasure will be offset by the knowledge that they are being paid for the interview...

So have crap London Boroughs. Not much incentive for local politicians to improve the success of their areas.

And an entirely reasonable assessment of future Bulgarian migration.

The poorer LA's are hugely subsidised already with a complex formula redistributing wealth. This looks like another stealth tax to me. How about sacking the additional million public sector workers recruited thanks to Brown, and introducing a 10% employers contribution for all local authority workers pension schemes (much lower than the present cost). That should allow some tax reductions.

Theres plenty of child labour in the third world making cheap t-shirts to keep our inflation figures down. No need to ship them here.

Not at all, merely pointing out that the English aren't paragons of virtue when living abroad.

look up older posts by Crashisunderway. He's positively mild mannered these days.

When I was young(er!) I could have afforded a house. I regularly got pissed. Now I'm in my mid 30's I read these stories in horror until I remember what I, and my friends did. Nothing really changes, its a government scare story people are reading too much into.

I dont think a single English person in Ireland registers their car there or pays Irish rates of insurance. Why be surprised that the Poles do the same?

True - I was thinking more that this would be the way around working for, say, a labour agency in a manual position. Whereas they couldn't recruit a Romanian to work in a factory as an employee, and the worker wouldn't be able to hold sole trader status performing such work, if they operate through a limited company I think they could be paid (through their company) by the friendly neighbourhood Manpower office.

Other than executive lets, have decent family homes ever made a positive rental return unless let as HMOs? Its a fundamentally different market to one bed flats and FTB type places.

Newsnight only touched upon this, but they can't prevent anyone working on a self employed basis - the attempt to pretend to stop open door immigration is a farce. Every back street firm of accountants will advertise in Romanian newspapers and websites offering their services to start a company.

If you visit a casino you can see people making the same error and get a free drink...

Exactly. She seemed a decent person, if not the brightest. Willing to work hard and make sacrifices - perhaps the repayments were only the same as rent and it seemed like a form of saving? I hope she gets a pay rise and her life becomes easier.

JY, All the best. I always enjoyed your posts and learnt a lot from them. Why not drop back in a year or so and let us know what your views on the market?

If you dont mind me asking, what do you do and how much do you earn? This seems to be a huge amount to have paid up and saved.

Nor any examples of the 'bargain homes' the headline mentions :angry:

BTB, what is the rental yield for the areas/ types of property you are looking at? I'm of the impression that the relative savings that are to be made by renting in most the country aren't available in many areas of London. To me this implies that decent parts of London are less overpriced than the national average.