UKIP

Of course it is, but it should not be forgotten. It is a raw wound here in WA Bags. It is not ancient history. Within my lifetime huge numbers of children were forcibly taken from their aboriginal families and brought up in horrible institutions to try to teach them white ways of doing things. These are the grandparents of today's children. At that time the victimised parents did not even have a vote. Life expectancy of Aboriginal people is currently 20 years less than white citizens today.
This forcible removal of children was a crime against humanity carried out while Australia still under the wing of the UK government (full legal independence did not occur until 1980s)
And it was carried out in the main by people who had migrated from the UK.
So actually - those immigrants did terrible things to the local population, and continued to do terrible things until quite recently. Puts a few people who want to come over from EU to Uk to fill job vacancies and pay taxes into persecutive, surely?

Understood , but I think the what-about-our-horrible-imperialism meme is often simplistic as well.

Wasn't meaning to be negative bags just to set things in a different context rather than the simplistic "we are being invaded by migrants" point of view.
When my DS was unemployed in the Thatcher era it was certainly not because of immigration.

Good morning greatnan.

I don't think I go along with the idea, oft expressed, that generally speaking UK workers are layabouts and Polish/EU ones are hardworking, reliable etc.

I know some employers say that is the reason they employ foreign workers but then, they would, wouldn't they? (Thanks Mandy Rice Davies).

There was an article in the Guardian a couple of years ago about the awful conditions which EU workers are prepared to put up with when working in this country, real abuse in some cases.

Yes, employers are supposed to pay the minimum wage but I read recently that some then charge rent out of that sum for very sub-standard accommodation which they provide.

It probably is the case that EU workers are unlikely to have ideas about worker solidarity in this country, are handicapped by not speaking the language and are prepared to put up with bad conditions in the short term (often they are only here for a year or two) and are in a number of way a more maleable workforce.

Incidentally my GS eventually managed to get a good permanent job which he has been in for three years or so. I hope yours did too.

Petallus, I sympathise because my own grandson has made dozens of applications for unskilled jobs or apprenticeships, but he lives in the Hull area and there is huge unemployment - nothing to do with immigration, though, everything to do with the poor regulation of the financial industry by both major parties for many years.
Did you ever find out why the employers preferred to employ Poles? Did they consider them more hard-working, or reliable - I suppose they had to pay them the minimum wage. I am sure your son is very hard-working but the employer may have gained an unfavourable impression of some British workers like the ones who gave up fruit picking after one day because it was too hard and that kind of 'news' is eagerly seized on by the right wing press.

Around here UKIP have done well mainly because we have had a Conservative county council for so long they have become conceited prigs who think they are real land owners and can overrule the common populous. Even when ALL the local MPs and ALL the district councils - mostly Conservative too - join said common populous and go against them too.

I was referring to your hyperbole too, jess. I was trying to temper it with my comments because it made me uncomfortable.

I probably feel rather bitter when people say immigration is not a problem.

I couple of years ago my 20 year old GS was desperate for work. He found something through an Agency at a local Asos warehouse. He would ride 6 miles on his bycicle at 5.30 a.m. only to be told, more often than not when he arrived, that he wasn't needed that day. Eventually he had to give up the job and go back on benefits because he was only earning a few pounds a week.

All of the permanent staff at the warehouse were recruited in Poland.

Although a life long Labour supporter, I seriously considered voting UKIP last week but in the end couldn't quite bring myself to without examining their other policies in more detail.

There may be statistics out there but I don't have any links because I haven't looked.

However, anecdotally, I know someone who went to the job centre looking for unskilled work (anything, he was desperate) and he remarked gloomily that many of the other people also there looking were from E U.

It seems common sense to me that if there is a dearth of jobs the more people there are competing, the less likely chance there is of each individual being successful.

One often reads that a certain job attracted 200 applicants!

Although I notice that you say 'those people who want them' which makes me wonder if you subscribe to the idea that UK born people who are unemployed are that way through choice.

I agree that people who are well educated/highly qualified don't have much to fear from immigration.

Bags that is rather sweeping re negativity. I was referring to my own hyperbole - I thought you were agreeing with some of the points I made?

I find the hyperbole very negative and think it is often based on erroneous assumptions. I really recommend Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. It puts a lot of historical events and (past) Eurasian supremacy in better perspective. (BTW, he includes mediterranean Africa in his definition of Eurasian).

True of course petullus - allowed a little hyperbole maybe when talking big picture and 400 years timespan? And I am not aware of any evidence that immigrants are in fact snatching basic wage jobs from UK born people who want them. Always happy to look at data though if anyone has any.

'What's a few basic wage jobs in comparison?'

Depends on whether you are desperate to find a basic wage job in these straightened times I suppose.

"The only one approved by the Catholic Church" absent

Yes I know bags - I'm just stating an argument in extreme terms to highlight the ludicrous carping that goes on amongst the anti-immigration brigade. The US has thrived on immigration. The UK economy would be in the proverbial without. And UK nationals have done more than their fair share of turning themselves into immigrants elsewhere - and continue to do so.
Apparently here in Western Australia "poms" i.e. UK English immigrants, are considered "smelly". I guess this originated in the days when families came off boats where there were few washing facilities and lived in very poor housing on arrival.
(Also there was a prison colony here originally - and the prison was full of UK exports and stunk the town out with the smell of ordure and corpses apparently.)
This prejudice is now well established in WA culture.
My DS was surprised the other day when a customer said (in a strong Indian accent) "You're a pom aren't you. But you don't smell!!"

Ella , like.!

Probably too busy doing it to call it anything.

Not exactly relevant to the OP but I just wondered what did people call the "missionary position" before the advent of nineteenth-century white missionaries?

I'll keep off the religious missionary side of things because I'm liable to be rude about that.

New land to settle, like the Vikings in Greenland, and Ireland and Britain. New land to settle, like the Pacific Ocean explorers, the Polynesians. New land to settle like the people who spread out from Africa to every continent and a huge number of the islands on the globe.

As I said, people explore. It's what we do. And we did it before anyone got imperialistic. Just who got imperialistic and when is an accident (or several) of history and geography. There's no point carrying on the guilt complex about it. Better to address problems we have now, in my view.

Later they were sent by god to convert the heathens.

I thought the early exploreres were motivated by financial gain and often had wealthy investors behind them either that it they were looking for new land to settle.

The early explorers were just that rather than conquerors. If it hadn't been western Europeans, it would have been some other group. It was an accident of history and geography. The point is, people explore, and they started exploring and spreading over the globe long before global imperialism took off – obviously, or there wouldn't have been 'natives' in the places Europeans then 'discovered'! The earlier European explorers did not know they would spread diseases against which the natives had no immunity.

This is not to lessen any of the evils that were perpetrated in the name of imperialism. Jared Diamond is good on this subject.

Well if you never sailed in, convinced that Britannia Rules the Waves and any bit of land you can stick a flag on, then you wouldn't swiftly kill the locals with your measles and your smallpox. Puts it in context really - what's a few basic wage jobs in comparison?

And the rest is history, as they say. I don't think we can blame ourselves for the disease-spreading, at least not to begin with.

Here is another blog (much better) about what this UKIP blip may be all about really. Still worrying, whatever the cuase.

just one or two places bags . But that's alright isn't it because us white anglo saxon folk have a right to move into other countries, take over land that belongs to other people, infect them with nasty diseases and impose our ways on the few that survive the genocide.