A typical DM 'story'.

That is so sad, Deeda. I can't help wondering what kind of homes these youngsters come from. Parents are the ones who should be sowing the seeds of aspiration in their children. Teachers too may be failing to inspire children with high expectations. Not only that, but too many girls think that a fortune will fall into their laps if they haunt the clubs that footballers frequent. This is certainly true in Manchester, as reported by my senior GD.

The point is that while no one has talked about 'sending home' it would be an answer to the problem in some peoples' minds. It wouldn't sit well with those from Heinz 57 families like mine because it's the mixture that has made us what we are. There does seem to be a problem with motivation with some of our school leavers, Most of the girls I worked with over the last few years seemd quite happy to bumble along on minimum wages, turning down chances of further training and possible promotion and waiting to find a husband/partner. The boys weren't a lot different, several had ambitious ideas but didn't get the exam results they would have needed and the ones who are getting on didn't really get settled in a career until they were thirty. A couple of foreign girls who worked with us were found very odd because they both had career plans and took every opportunity for promotion.

Coming late to this debate and have tried to read and absorb all the various opinions and thoughts. There seems to be an agreement that we welcome and value the diversity brought to this country by immigrants but the time is coming when some firm of restriction is becoming necessary. We worry that our young people lack the skills and work ethic necessary to compete with hungry, driven incomers and that our resources are becoming over stretched in some areas.

That's the summary, but how can we as a nation change this state of affairs?

Immigration control?

Our young people?

The first is surely in the hands of the government of the day.

The second ????

The numbers are being restricted re requirement to pass English test, checking on universities etc.
If kids are not taught reasonable manners and social skills at home then they are going to be useless in customer service jobs aren't they.
I was surprised yesterday when 2 staff members in our M and S actually spoke to me in a pleasant manner. They were both over 50. I'm not sure this has ever happened before!
Those who come through the UK education system poorly equipped are the product of our culture.

BAnanas couldn't agree more

JessM I don't disagree with you regarding the quality or work ethic of many British job applicants. So, what's gone wrong and where? Is it the attitude in the home or the education they receive in the mainly State sector? Do the majority aspire to be anything beyond famous? The reality is that we can't compete and schools and universities have been churning out unemployable people for too long.

One thing the private sector is so good at, educationally, is fostering aspiration in a competative environment. We aren't all equal but we can try to overcome that. Mediocrity should never be the default position.

Ok, right wing rant over

Incidentally, I know this is the DM thread but the one I started on immigration has migrated here...my OP was about the new wave of immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania who will have free access to the job market and all benefits in 2014. These are poor countries who can't afford to lose the people we want - who gets the poor and huddled masses?

I have no problem with immigrants (my own DH was himself a migrant) but I think the time has come to restrict the numbers coming into UK. We are a small island, our infrastructure cannot support the numbers already here with housing shortages, long waits for medical treatment etc.

As has been said before the problem is that if someone says they are concerned about the amount of immigration they are immediately labeled a racist. What good does it do to allow more and more people into the country and them not being able to find adequate housing, health care, jobs etc.

Yes I've been reading Ed Milliband's "We got it wrong" interview in the Times today, where he appears to have acknowledged the public's growing anxiety about wholesale immigration. Personally I'm sick of hearing the admissions of "with a bit of hindsight", we need politicians with a bit of foresight, if indeed you were to believe that they didn't know that vast numbers would be coming here anyway, as seemingly that was the master plan. What concerns me is that firstly our own young people are not being properly prepared to compete with a mostly superior and competent workforce from abroad, how many of them are told in school you cannot afford to be complacent about your future, you have to be as good as the Eastern Europeans to compete. We know from people like Terry Leahy ex boss of Tescos that many of our young are ill prepared for the workplace. The second problem that worries me, particularly here in the overcrowded South East is how the hell are we going to house everybody, or do we revert to shanty towns, people living in sheds because to me that's just Dickensian. Like Sel said it is not racist to address these issues we are talking about numbers here not race, we had a housing problem before the influx of Eastern Europeans. When I watched Panorama the other night and saw how badly our own indigenous people were suffering from a lack of an adequate place to live when they fall on hard times, I fear it's only going to get worse. Gordon Brown showed what he thought of the ordinary person's fears when he left his microphone on and described that lady Gillian Duffy as a bigot. Her only mistake was letting that oaf into her house for that ridiculous p.r. exercise afterwards. Most of the political elite have complete contempt for their voters they don't care what they think they will do anything to get elected and then renege on all their promises. Labour are simply faking their concern knowing they caused all this and worst of all shut down debate at the time and like Brown, accused those that were affected bigots.

Well saying "we got it wrong" does show some sense doesn't it. Too many politicians over the years have been unwilling to admit that they got things wrong. Since Blair came to power it has been spin, spin, spin - always the positive message.
Milliband is the child of immigrants and I admire him for standing up and making that clear to everyone. Unlike Portillo, for instance, who did not. (referred to as Senor Porteeyo in our house)
Lets face it, during the boom years we all benefitted a lot from immigration. Not just customer service staff and a diversity of dining options. Companies cannot thrive and be successful and contribute to the taxes unless they can recruit enough staff. It is very dispiriting, time consuming and expensive to be trying to recruit and seeing candidate after candidate who does not fit the requirements.
If people were getting on a bus from Wales or Yorkshire and applying for these jobs then they would be welcome. But they are not willing to make the same sacrifices that immigrant workers do. There may be many in their home countries who would not either. But migrants are the ones with the get up and go.
I remember a young man from a very depressed northern village who I interviewed. Offered a good job in his local area. Had to come south for 2 weeks training. Couldn't hack it being away from home and went back after 3 days.
Anyway... we all benefitted from their labour and the government have tried to provide school places etc. But what could "they" do to increase the provision of decent low cost housing in London I wonder.

Well it was from the horses mouth today wasn't it, Miliband admitted Labour 'got it wrong', again.

If the D.M. suggested that you should speak English before you could get a job in the public sector I can well imagaine the comments on the BBC and by some G.N's. Made me laugh.

What a hypocrite, he has name called and verbally abused the government at every turn over immigration levels, house building planning etc., and now he had the affront to embrace immigration debate.

I would not vote UKIP but I reckon they have started to make the others sit up and listen. The worst scenario would be another b----y coalition government for years to come if the main parties don't get a grip.

Deedaa who on here has mentioned 'sending home'? That's quite inflamatory and not the issue.

jopa If you're reading this the lady in question is currently living in LA and making her name as a fashion designer.

Immigration is such a difficult question. Easy to know what should be done when talking about abstract numbers, more difficult when you come down to individual cases. Obviously we can't keep taking more and more people into such an overcrowded island, but at the same time I wouldn't want to see my son's hungarian girlfriend sent home. Immigration has always suited us when we've needed workers. My husband's grandfather walked from Italy to Wales as part of a Government scheme at the beginning of the last century, but I don't know why we can't have the sort of controls that other countries find so easy to put in place.

Jess the controls on immigration here are a bit of a joke. Unlike the NZ, Australia, Canada, the US etc. Maybe down to our Colonia guilt and then, what we signed up to in 2004 with the EU. Once you're in, you're in, no check to see you leave. The figures from the 2011 census .. well, we've counted the ones who filled in the form.

BAnanas that's the reality not the spin. Sadly. I'd love to hear a coherent answer to the issues you've raised. I presume you would not call yourself racist, for me it's the furtherest thing I can imagine being but, when you live amongst the reality of the Labour open door policy and are lectured by people, for whom there is no impact, are living far away, it quite laughable.

Yes, the immigrants who are here, remain. Not an issue. We love what they have brought, restaurants, shops open all hours, cheap labour,their work ethic, wonderfull. Sheesh, I can eat in a different ethnic restaurant every night of the week and there aren't many that I haven't sampled. Quite interesting on any commuter train out of London, how many languages you hear, seldom English. These are driven people and good for them, we all want to better ourselves.

But our young can't compete. And therein lies the rub. Life is a competition and our young are ill equipped.

I'm not even touching on the stretching to breaking point of resources. it only happens in certain parts of the country but when it does, the tensions created are huge. Such an opening for the far right. Crikey, it's such a threat. Please stop with the multicultural lectures and realise that for those who live it, and indeed have welcomed and enjoyed it, the last ten years have brought many people to breaking point.

We are such a tolerant country and I am proud of that. We have needed immigrants historically. but the muddled thinking of the last decade has lead to the situation we face now. Unrestricted immigration and resources that just can't cope.

JessM, I really don't blame the immigrants and I know loads of them are hardworking, our cafe where we go for coffee is staffed by Eastern Europeans who make the best coffee outside Italy and always with a smile and are quietly efficient, the tables are always cleared immediately, I wouldn't go anywhere else. I can remember being in Little Chefs on occasions when we were travelling to and fro that were staffed by English where they would walk empty handed past tables and I have to say it struck me how badly places like this were run. It saddens me that SOME of our younger generation don't get it. Since being at university and graduating my son has worked in a clothes shop which is staffed by an age range of between 17 - 24, my son is a supervisor here and tells me often of how unreliable many of these employees are, not turning up for no apparent reason, a couple of them having a row on the shop floor in full view of customers, not coming in after a heavy night out. Guess what nationality? English of course. It's not hard to understand how some employers won't employ English, but that makes me sad for the ones that don't have these sloppy attitudes and aren't given a chance. I used to say to my kids when they were still at school "do the teachers ever say that you will be competing in a global world?" and that was a few years ago, it was never mentioned at that time and I wonder if it is now, I just think that our younger generation are not prepared for the world that they are going into. Having said all that Labour's gross under estimate of the numbers that eventually came showed such an amazing lack of foresight, if indeed you can believe that they actually thought that only 13,000 would arrive, as we now know they wanted to change the make-up of the country. Where did they suppose these people would be housed, given that we didn't have enough houses before the newcomers arrived. Or is acceptable to have umpteen people sharing a bedroom or shanty towns springing up as they are in areas of London like Southall?

greatnan so given your original post, there was no sub text?

Greatnan, I admit I was being a little bit over the top, and a little big tongue in cheek, when I wrote fascists/Nazi/etc. what I really meant was that some are a bit sniffy if about DM. That's OK I think if that's how anyone feels it's their prerogative to express that. Whatever paper/s anyone chooses to read, for me, it is not a falling out matter, just a difference of opinion.

Bananas the immigrants came in large numbers because the economy was booming and was desperate their labour. Same happened in Ireland - but many have now left as their economy no longer needs to employ immigrant labour and skills. It is not their fault if employment grew faster than housing etc.

Bananas, I don't think you will find any post from our members which label DM readers as fascists/Nazis/devil worshippers. Some of us happen to believe it is a poor newspaper with a not-very-well hidden agenda of demonising the less privileged members of society. I, for one, have never made any criticism of any DM reader.
This is not to say that there are no other poor newspapers and anybody who wants to mention them is entirely at liberty to do so.

I've been away so I've only just read page one and this last page on this post. I think it's already been stated that the DM seems to pilfer stories like this one about the young mother and her children from Closer magazine, I'm not quite sure why girls like her do these sort of interviews because they must know that they will annoy their peers who are having to work/study and don't have a home and an income provided without having ever worked. Clearly it has been published to provoke. Nevertheless, we have discussed all this before on other threads. Personally I think the Daily Express are far more reactionary than the Mail, and it never seems to get the flack the Mail gets. Like others have stated I read a range of papers, many on line and these usually comprise of DM, Telegraph, The Independent and The Evening Standard (London paper) we also take the Times. I'm another who gets fed up with people who label DM readers as fascist/Nazis/devil worshipers, yes they print stories like this so what! They also campaigned to bring the murderers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. Like some of the last few posters, I watched the Panorama screened last night about four homeless people/families. I found all four cases heartbreaking, particularly the lady with cancer, her case was truly appalling in that her particular council, I think Redbridge could not find her anywhere decent to live. Also the family with four children. Why couldn't Croydon Council place a family of six in somewhere larger that a one bedroom flat for heaven's sake, when fairly sizeable homes can be found for large families from overseas, sorry if I'm sounding like a Daily Mail reader but it does occur to me that we need to look after our own citizens who fall on hard times a bit better than this. I will never forgive Labour for allowing so many people to arrive in this country, when we do not have the housing, schools or infrastructure to cope with our now burgeoning population. I live in West London and believe me we have an acute shortage of housing, particularly in the private rental sector. A number of schools in the general area have had to be built to cope with the increased demand for school places. We have a finite amount of space in our small island and I don't know how many more people we can stuff into the overcrowded South East before we grind to a complete halt.

Mamie in some countries you fill in a landing card with contact details, length of stay, address if stay etc. Then you have to fill in a departure card and they record that you have left.
My belief is that the UK just that check documents allow entry and that is it. Anyone know the low down on the IT?
One of my most challenging flights (in terms of trying to stay chilled) was flying back from Perth to NZ. I had had my visa extended to say in NZ with DS2 while he was having chemo. Been to see DS1 etc. I was filling in my landing card, somewhere over the Tasman Sea, when I realised that my visa extension did not allow me to leave NZ and then re-enter.
Midnight at Wellington airport saw me sitting on a seat after everyone else had gone through, while the immigration officer rang the office in the city to check whether I could come in. Fortunately there was a duty officer available and they were tolerant of my mistake and did not send me back to Australia.

That is the point I am making about the south-east Sel. The UK depends more and more on service industries and Croydon is in the centre of that.
Mind you it always has been for us. My family ran a pub there in the nineteenth century.

Croydon has suffered rapid population growth over the last 10 years most of which is due to immigration.

Surely this is mainly about the failure of housing policy over the past thirty years. Council houses sold off, failure to invest in new houses, over-development in the south-east and under-investment in the north have all added to the problem.
Since people seeking work will crowd in where there is work, you get huge pressure building up on housing in areas that are already overcrowded.
Bonkers.

Jodi agreed, poor woman. All the people featured were lovely and I thought the parents squashed into the one bed flat were remarkable, lovely children. It was quite heartbreaking. The scale of the problem is enormous, sadly.