Lithuanian shanty town... in Peterborough

[Mathom]

 

How can young people in Britain today be expected to earn enough money to raise a family? British youngsters are effectively being told they're surplus to requirements, and are expected to live in poverty on benefits for the rest of their lives.

 

We're selling our children short aren't we? What will the future hold for the average youngster who leaves school and wants an average life - to get a job, earn a bit towards buying or even just renting a home, meet someone, have kids... The only way an ordinary youngster can have an ordinary life is to fall on the state. That's just desperately wrong.

[Strix]

So...in come the foreign workers who can stand to live temporarily in bad conditions in an old caravan or shed, knowing their nice flat in Krakow is waiting for them. Meanwhile a new generation of rural British youngsters grows up on benefits.

Don't kid yourself - I used to live near Spalding, and have also lived in Peterborough - just off the road most of the filming was done on in last night's BBC2 prog. The councillor Swift lives just doors up from where our close friends lived, 5mins walk away, and in the area suffering most from the impact

 

We were there last June, having not lived in the area for 8 years now, and it was a shock to see how it's changed

 

The rural jobs have never been done by local teenagers (and I was one of them for a time), they were done by travellers and students. The local kids would do tractor driving if dad owned the farm, but it was virtually unheard of for any other teen to get their hands dirty in a field

 

The trades are a different kettle of fish. A friend in the trades has suffered greatly, and it's not because there is nobody having their house done up, it's because there are Poles willing to bust a gut to do a good job, not necessarily undercut

 

Mr Strix is part of a management team looking after a high-tech piece of railway engineering equipment - operated by Poles - and he can't fault them. You just can't get the commitment from blokes brought up in this country with a unionistic influence

 

Did anybody see the interview outside the job centre on the prog last night? A bunch of British lads (with a poor command of the English language) were asked what they thought of the immigration situation. Needless to say they moaned about 'them taking our jobs', but when quizzed further, they had no intention of doing the lettuce picking jobs the immigrants were willing to do, although it turned out that some of those immigrants are qualified nurses!

[StarSparkle]

We're selling our children short aren't we? What will the future hold for the average youngster who leaves school and wants an average life - to get a job, earn a bit towards buying or even just renting a home, meet someone, have kids... The only way an ordinary youngster can have an ordinary life is to fall on the state. That's just desperately wrong.

 

It's criminal, it really is. It's so desperately wrong, as you say, and so desperately sad.

 

I really feel for teenagers today - what life can they look forward to?

 

Something's gotta change, to paraphrase The Stranglers

 

StarSparkle

[Tony]

Unfortunately for them, many tradespeople have priced themselves out of the game now that there is a cheaper alternative. Plasterers will just have to go back to the one holiday villa and a couple of rented student properties.

 

The party is over.

[pk014b7161]

why stop there surely the poles could do managerial jobs for a lot less than british managers get paid

[StarSparkle]

why stop there surely the poles could do managerial jobs for a lot less than british managers get paid

 

I misread your post slightly, pk - I was left with the thought that you were suggesting we employed Poles for jobs as police officers

 

Wait, that'll be next on the agenda, you'll see...

 

StarSparkle

[shirker]

This is nothing new, history shows us the masses have always moved to where the work is.

As for Lithuania, there is something wrong with the country, as there are many skilled people there working, in good white collar jobs, for very poor money. ie around £500 to £800 per month, but the prices of nearly everything is on a par with the UK. In some cases more expensive.

 

Unfortunately there, they have a very wide gap between the poor and the rich, and unlike the UK, the old and poor have to fend for themselves without the handouts we take for granted.

[Mathom]

 

Did anybody see the interview outside the job centre on the prog last night? A bunch of British lads (with a poor command of the English language) were asked what they thought of the immigration situation. Needless to say they moaned about 'them taking our jobs', but when quizzed further, they had no intention of doing the lettuce picking jobs the immigrants were willing to do, although it turned out that some of those immigrants are qualified nurses!

 

Yes, and as I've already said, British people cannot afford to do these jobs. You have a choice - take the low paid job and then try to fund an impossibly priced home somehow, or stay on benefits and have your rent paid.

 

We might be nasty and characterise working class people as having 'poor English' and whatnot, but they are certainly not so stupid as to be willing to live in the conditions the migrant workers do, knowing that they are not here 'for good'. It's disgusting to expect British people to live in those conditions.

 

The migrants are indeed 'taking our jobs' but not in the way the BNP rant about - they're doing it by undercutting British workers and the employers are exploiting that. What's more the Government in complicit in this, and they are also making the situation in those countries worse. How would we feel if all our nurses, plumbers, etc that we'd paid to be trained for our benefit just decamped to France?

[pk014b7161]

if the brits would work for£1 an hour we would be classed as the best in the world

[bladesman123]

in america during the depression in the 30s shanty towns were set up on the outskirts of new york and they were called hoovervilles