They're all at it!

[Norrie]

Steve, Gawd, you look awful, what's up with you ???

On a serious note, as you say, when the Docklands were being built, or rebuilt, I worked in a brickworks, making old fashioned "common " brick to be delivered there.Seemingly they were the same as the 100 year old bricks in the original buildings. The lorries were queing up the road to the brickwork, I was on Piecework, and making a fortune,packing brick. This was in the mid-late 80's if memory serves me right. Anyway, once the building "boom" was over ,they shut the brickwork down, at the time, it felt like, last lorry out locks the gate,and its now just a piece of waste ground that the kids play on. We must have sent millions of bricks down to London during those years.....

[big_cod]

worked in the shetlands in the thatcher years 85 -87 offshore contracting money was good at the start then the the wages were getting cut each year ,and the saying if you dont like it you know what you can do, at that time under thatcher work was hard to find up north and you were been exployted by the oil companies the very sad fact to this was it took piper alpha to make the rot stop guys were walking off the platforms they started to strugle for men suddenley the wages went up £3 per hour but i remember very well the thatcher motto if you dont like it **** off

[Jim Roper]

I've said it before, but here it is again. The place I work at is moving the work to an ex-mining area with the loss of 580 local jobs.

People with only a few years in, are finding new jobs now, while they can.

They are being replaced with Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Czech etc., workers! Some are living 16 to a house as we work round the clock in 3 shifts!

Some of them with kids, have gone straight to the top of the council's housing list, according to staff at the Jobcentre.

According to the telly last night one third of the population of Boston, Lincolnshire, is now non-British.

It's a pity UKIP are not strong enough yet!

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Hi Jim,

 

I wouldn't hang my hat on UKIP they made a big show about disrupting the EC parliment and it has turned out to be all hot air.

 

Voting for Howel is voting for a second generation illegal immigrant so that's not much of an option.

 

Hi Steve

 

I would agree Blair hung his hat on a very rusty nail with the 45 min. WMD.

 

Unemployment has been around for years and currently despite all of the financial immigrants creeping into the country it is still very low.

 

Interest rates are now controlled by the Bank of England and have remained steady for the past eight years.

 

I feel sorry for anyone who has lost their job and their home, but past history shows this happened to more families when Maggie ruled.

 

I have no political preference I have voted for all three main parties and have to put my hands up to voting Maggie in.

 

This soon proved to be a bad mistake, it did not cause me a personal problem but I looked on as our mining and steel industries where torn apart, house prices soared and crashed, and kids were leaving school to work for nothing sweeping floors in fast food outlets.

 

I could extend the list but I don't want to bore you with a stream of facts cast in concrete. You like me may have escaped last time, next time it could be us.

 

People would look upon me as typical tory material, but after the last dose of tory rule you can count me out.

[Guest jay_con]

Seems to be mass hysteria about this immigration thing. How much is true and how much is founded in a deep rooted hatred of people from other countries? I really arent sure. As a nation we seem rather intolerant of outsiders. I have a russian family live over the road (in council accommodation), They are far nicer than some of the scum who live in the other houses.

 

I heared a relative of mine the other day complaining about som czechs starting work at the local shellfish processing factory. Worried about them taking local jobs. For as long as I can remember these jobs were advertisaed locally but noone wanted them.

[Guest stevie cop]

So come on then. No one has commented on my bit about miners and commercial fishermen.

 

What happened to the miners was terrible. Wasn't it? It was so bad that almost everyone north of Watford has a deep hatred of the Tories because of what they did.

 

Most people on here seem to want to see the commercial fishermen go the same way. So what's different? The only difference, from what I can see, is that it's labour that will be driving the final nail into their coffin.

[Pelyma]

Spring, you want to try living on the South Coast, the immigration levels are too high. They are mainly swarthy looking young men that aren't putting anything into the local community. The local rag now even has a page for all the Portugese workers in the area. The trouble is if you have large concentrations of immigrants those that have kids flood the local schools, slow down the teaching of the local kids etc.

 

Labour's so called excellent management of the economy is a fallacy. The Bank of England has kept rates low, not politicians. Every budget GB has got his predictions wrong, not on the economic growth that he crows about, the the Revenue that he recieves, ie he is nailing us to the floor with taxes, but he budgeted to screw us for even more! He inherited an economy that was on the up and he has ridden the wave. He has a hole in his finances that will cause huge problems. The biggest problem though in my mind is the nannyism, that we as citizen's can't be trusted, they regulate this and regulate that and we end up paying for it, be it in a higher cost of the product or increased taxes. This tax then gets poorly spent with an ever increasing percentage spent on admin meaning the front line service does not benefit to the level it should.

 

At the end of the day we can all make of our lives what we want. My father was brought up through the war with his 2 siblings by just his mother, he got a trade and has worked bloody hard all his life, I'm 34 with 2 kids and a wife and I've worked bloody hard, changing my life when circumstances dictated it. No government created what I have, I did and I had no more help than anyone else. You have to take what life deals you and strive for more of what you want. The trouble is there are too many that sit and wring their hands that they haven't done this that or the other because of something else - there are few that are really in this position. Yet the government wants to penalise me all the time, I pay a bigger percentage of my income in tax, I pay more VAT on the things I buy, I pay more stamp duty, when I'm old I'm less likley to have state help for any care. I pay for private medical that leaves more resources for the NHS. All I want from a govt is one who looks after those that really needs it and encourages the country to work, I don't care what label you put on it. But flooding the country with new rules and regulations, unchecked immigration and picking wars with other nations does none of this.

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Hi Pelyma,

 

You are right about interest rates but who put that system in place? Gordon Brown.

 

Had we not put up our mitts Canary Wharfe and other targets would have gone the same way as the World Trade Centre. As that BBC reporter in KSA said " I saw hate in their eyes" as they shot him and his camera man.

 

As part of the EC we can all go and work were we want, part of the package. We have Mr. Heath to thank for that.

 

Stamp duty has increased under all goverments, so have rules and regulations.

 

Like you I have not had any support and to be quite honest it does not worry me.

 

Those of us who have not been so well blessed are the ones I tend to think of, without them we would be up to our necks in s**t and rubbish, many of the jobs now being carried out by imported labour was not taken up by our work force.

 

Everyone is right about politicians but it applies to all parties, you just have to vote where you as an individual think it best serves your particular choices.

 

The sooner this election is done and we can get back to some serious fishing the better

[Guest Flybynight]

I worked for 4 years with a refugee agency (www.theirc.org) including out of the London office on a resettlement programme. So I actually know a few facts about immigration. However, I have never read a true story on the subject in our tabloid press. No exaggeration - not one. I am not saying that there is no issue - far from it: there definitely is (and I have a lot of sympathy for the position of the poster who sees immigrants getting local jobs and housing). But it isn't anything to do with the daily hysteria and lies poured out to spark mass indignation amongst a credible population of those looking for scapegoats.

 

The reality is that the number of 'illegal' immigrants is dramatically smaller than we are told by the press. And every country has those - and yes we need to deal with that, but there have been massive amounts of funds spent on trying to do so. How much do we want to spend on this? Remember, that each immigrant or assylum seeker is a person too and that the vast majority of them have no concept of a benefits system. So the suggestion that they come here to sit on benefits for years is absolute s***e. They come here to get work or to escape serious persecution. Does that cause a problem? Yes it definitely does - but: many UK businesses report that they cannot get local labour to do the jobs that the immigrants do. Nasty, badly paid jobs.

 

There are significant numbers of legal immigrants of course. That is a different issue. I don't hear from anyone other than the extreme right that we should stop immigration completely. The question is how many?

 

I heard a farmer interviewed yesterday (no labour supporter either) who has to employ Eastern Euopeans to pick his strawberries because there is no local labour who will take his wages to do it: £4 to £8 an hour. So - should we ban immigrant labour so he has to put his wages up? That would just cause the super markets to import more from overseas. Like it or hate it (and I hate it) the world is global now, and capital will move to the most efficient location.

 

If we want to restrict the number of immigrants coming into the UK are we prepared to limit the number of immigrants leaving the UK? I have family who have lived in Southern Spain - and have done for over 20 years. The influx of Brits there is causing massive social problems. They come with money and have screwed the local economy - particularly for housing. They largely speak no Spanish. They buy british and there are flourishing industries, British owned, to cater for this immigrant population. Including local, English language papers by the way. And largely this population is rude, offensive, culturally insensitive (public drunkeness and semi-dress for eg are not part of Spanish life). And this is not just on the coast any more. How do you think the Spanish think about us in those locations?

 

So: while we are banging on about our own immigration problem (largely based on tabloid untruths - listen to the hysterical language used each day) we might also think about our exports. The tabloids are very simplistic - and their solutions really solve nothing but they do allow you to blame a group who have no voice and are therefore an easy target.

 

Now I would definitely favour a ban on immigrants being allowed to own fishing rods in the UK

 

FBN

[Guest jay_con]

Hi steve.

 

Firstly id like to say that I think the two situations are very different. The coalminers never stole from a public resource for starters.

 

A lot of people seem to think I have a hatred of commercial fishermen. This copuldnt be further from the truth. What I dislike are 1. Pair trawling and 2. People who break the law and justify it by saying were makiung a living so its ok.