Site behaviour

Then am I to understand there can be no reference to Muslim terrorists, Catholic priests etc or are only our "cornish" brothers afforded such protection. I can understand why you would want to take the lazy way out to appease the bully boys. I'm beginning to understand how a danish cartoonist feels.

Sooner or later the socialist bullies will have to be taken on. In the meantime a bit of perspective



If I'm being accused of being a racist then god help us all. (yes rags I know)

Davethegull

Well after the open roof fiasco that resulted in last night's international being called off, Poland is very much the talking point today.

I'd join DTG in his admiration of the Poles. I've worked with a good many of them. The seem to enjoy life in England, the men in particular work very hard, and their wives and girlfriends are naturally thrilled by the maternity benefits and other bonuses they find themselves entitled to.

Even in the small town near me the newsagent stocks polish newspapers and the supermarket has a section stocked with polish foods. Coming back to Britain for the first time in 5 years i can see why the numbers involved would come as a bit of a surprise to DTG, but he'll understand that our politicians claimed to be far more shocked.

The politicians got their figures monumentally wrong:



news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5273356.stm

As you can see this is from 2006,so we were being shocked by the extent of this miscalculation 5 or 6 years ago, and have now got used to the results of it.

DTG asks what's so wrong with their country that they would want to leave their families ? It's much better if a Pole answered that, and about a year ago I remember reading an article which shed some light on their motivation in coming to Britain, as well as underlining some of the well known problems that Britain has been building up for itself:

'In one shop I find a middle-aged Polish businessman who is happy to talk to me. I ask what brought him here. His answers may surprise you. ‘Britain is the best country in Europe to work in. You are more open-minded, more helpful, more friendly to newcomers than anyone else in Europe.
‘I like this country . . . I like to live and work here.’ He compares us most favourably to the unwelcoming, prejudiced Germans who are far closer to his home region in Western Poland.
But – and I have to press him to talk about this which he says is ‘a very delicate matter’ – he is baffled by the unwillingness of the British to take the jobs on offer.
‘Many of you just don’t want to work. You take incapacity benefit [he knew the exact English phrase]. You just assume you’ll get money from the Government.’

He finds this attitude unbelievable. It wouldn’t be possible in Poland. ‘It’s just not true that we take your jobs,’ he says emphatically, ‘I’ve been working here for a long time now, and I know this – that all businesses want reliable, friendly, helpful workers. That is all we do. You can do it too.’

The article goes on to explain why we don't 'do it too', which can pretty much be summed up in just two words 'welfare state' and why for the moment nanny state Britain makes such a pleasant contrast to Poland.

'Our welfare state assumes that any weakness, any failing, any bad habit, requires help and public money rather than moral guidance and stern limits to behaviour. The same is true in the classrooms, and in thousands of homes.
The newcomers have been in a harder school. They have grown up in a cold grey world where if you don’t learn, you fail your exams, if you don’t work, you go hungry, and where if you don’t obey the law, it lashes out at you with a club.

Offer such people free entry to Britain, and they will think they have come to paradise, even if they have to sleep ten to a room and work until their backs break for the minimum wage. Sooner or later they, too, will be corrupted by it'.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037877/Boston-Lincolngrad-The-strange-transformation-sleepy-English-town.html

Not the definitive answer by any means DTG, but it probably provides us with some pointers. I'd advise the Poles to hang onto that work ethic as long as they can. The Nanny state, is currently only being propped up by money flying off the Government printing presses at record speed, a long term future of inflation and recession surely beckons.

It is certainly interesting to speculate on what kind of Britain might greet you in a further 5 years time .

We will not be deleting your account on the TFF DTG. You are entitled to have your own opinion even if its not shared by others on the TFF. I do think such political threads are always dangerous on any forum due to the strong views people do hold.

Maybe best to post on other threads such as your thoughts on our games and any news that does come out of the club. we are after all first and foremost a football forum, but one where if everyone sticks to our few simple rules, nearly anything can be debated.

wildebeeste

Not at all wildebeeste, and just as I was about to recommend the Daily Mail to DTG as the ideal source to get an insight on modern Britain, I'll have to accept that even that fine publication can get it's facts wrong on occasions

Of more importance to the Mods will be the knowledge that we're all mates behind the scenes, even if there is some posturing in front of the Despatch Box.

Thanks for posting this link up, Joe.



This, in essence, is what the publishers of the Daily Mail want its readers to believe. Why? Look at their revenue streams. Why would the wealthy men whose businesses are built on the back of cheap, transient labour want to pay vast sums of money for access to audiences (via advertising) which actively oppose their business model?

The Daily Mail may push a populist 'anti-EU' line, but its real problem is the welfare state and the EU's social chapter. Strip this away and the Daily Mail would have far less of a problem with what is calls "a simple free trade agreement".

This essentially is the divide in parliamentary politics. On the one side (within as well as across parties) you have the social democratic view that the state - and its sanctioned trade unions - should mediate between labour and capital, and on the other you have the view that the state should exist pretty much solely to defend property rights and the interests of capital. For sure, this latter view extends to providing a degree of education and healthcare (productive workers need to have access to education and healthcare - unless you have a limitless supply of labour), but that is essentially that.

I am opposed to both these conceptions of state, because I believe they are means to the same end. Social democracy (welfare entitlements, the electoral franchise, reformist trade unions) is about obtaining a population's consent for a system in which they have only limited stake. So with the previous administration you had an expanded group of people in the pay of the state (welfare recipients and public sector workers), whilst capital was propped up by state subsidies, minimum and minimally waged workers, "flexible" migrant workers from Europe and elsewhere, and - most significantly - cheap third world labour. This cosy arrangement was upset by the financial crisis in 2008, at which point it became clear that capital accumulation was no longer possible at the same rate under the same arrangements in different circumstances. "Austerity" is the euphemistically entitled solution.