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Nah mate, I don't want to work in like no cornfield

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  • Nah mate, I don't want to work in like no cornfield

    Stories like this is why I think "they are stealing our jobs" types are full of **** most of the time.

    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service


    High wages have drawn scores of Eastern Europeans to at least one corner of England. But not everyone welcomes this new workforce, even if unemployed locals themselves refuse to do the same jobs.
    A slice of today's British countryside. Giant butternut squash nestle in the ground waiting to be plucked and dispatched to satisfy gastropub tastes. Half a dozen workers trudge behind a tractor bending down to pick and load the squash. And the only person in the field who's British is the bloke driving the tractor. The rest are all from Eastern Europe.

    The crew of Latvians, Lithuanians and a Pole includes a former nurse who's earning four times what she was making in the hospital back home. It's monotonous, physical work with 60-hour weeks, but no-one's complaining - or taking a tea break.

    "It's wonderful here," says Mariusz, fresh in from Poland.

    A dream workforce for the farmer surveying the workers toiling on his land outside Peterborough. "We have a job to get anyone else to do the work."

    He has all but given up on using locals to work in the fields. "They don't work as hard."

    In fact, they barely work in the fields at all. The agency supplying this farm with labour has had hundreds of Eastern Europeans pass through its doors in the last two years - and of all three English people.

    "We've a job to get anybody else to do the work," says farmer Cam Allan. "The rates of pay are above minimum wage. It's just finding the people to do this type of work we've got."

    The agricultural sector would be in dire straits without the immigrants willing to do the hard graft on the land. Labour which can net workers up to £25,000-a-year with overtime.

    'Prefer to sign-on'

    But that's not enough to entice some of the local lads picking up their dole money in Peterborough. A constant trickle of young men are in and out of the office collecting their state benefits. But there's little appetite for taking one of those vegetable-picking jobs of up to £7-an-hour. One group of lads:

    "No mate I'd prefer to sign-on than do that."

    "I don't want to work in like no cornfield."

    "I don't want to work with a load of foreigners."

    Another lad is picking up his last benefits cheque. He's just got a job after 12 months of searching. "I think because of all the foreigners" he says. "I know people don't like it, but I've never had trouble getting a job before. I've been going for jobs and they've got over 200 people applying for them."


    The massive influx of Eastern Europeans may be keeping parts of the economy afloat, but is there a social cost?

    Britain has experienced its biggest wave of migration in centuries in recent years. No-one really knows how many Eastern Europeans have come to Britain. The official figure is 800,000.

    One in 10

    A fair few have ended up in Peterborough - enticed by the demand for farming and factory work. Immigrants now make up around one in 10 of the city's population. Some locals say Peterborough is creaking under the pressure.

    Charles Swift has been a local councillor for 55 years. As leader of the city council in the early 1970s, he agreed to house Asian families who had been forcibly expelled from Uganda - prompting National Front pickets against him.

    But the councillor feels this latest influx has gone too far - with not enough government money to recognise the real scale and impact of the recent immigration.

    He points out the local GP surgery which has received a thousand immigrant patients in the last six months and a primary school coping with 24 languages.

    "The ordinary crappie in the street, if you stop and talk to them, they're right pig-sick, fed up to the teeth. They can see standards deteriorating all the way round and they repeatedly say to you 'enough is enough Charles. We've had enough of it'."

    Putting down roots

    Resident Hema Patel agrees. "They should put a stop to immigration totally," she says "...whether they be Europeans, from the Far East, whatever. And they should sort out the problems now."

    The local farmers and factory owners would say Peterborough hasn't had enough of it. They're still short of labour. But with immigration it's hard to see beyond the particular impact it's having on your immediate life - and that impact will be very different between a boss trying to keep his business afloat and someone whose street has become a magnet for immigrants.

    What's striking in Peterborough is how many of the recent migrants are actually here for the long haul - and not just a year of two to make some money and head home

    In a church hall, a Polish politician addresses a room full of his countrymen - seeing whether any might be tempted back home to a country now short of workers.

    Out of the whole room, only one Pole says she is considering going back home. The rest are here to stay.

    One young mother says, "I've a flat here now and my children are with me. They're at school and have made friends here. So I couldn't go back to Poland now - even if the situation there improved very quickly."


    The bit in bold is hilarious.
    One day Canada will rule the world, and then we'll all be sorry.

  • #2


    I think I may use this as my avatar.
    One day Canada will rule the world, and then we'll all be sorry.

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    • #3
      It's similar over here. I say if you find yourself actually competing for work with an uneducated Mexican immigrant who speaks three words of English, has no real job skills and could be caught and deported at any time, getting rid of every Mexican in the U.S.A. and then vaporizing Mexico wouldn't make your life any better.
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      • #4
        the problem isn't with the immigrants, but rather with the ridiculous situation where people can refuse to get a job and have the rest of us pick the tab. the blame ultimately lies with the government for fostering a culture of dependancy whereby we pay nearly 5 million adults NOT to work.
        "The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.

        "The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton

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        • #5
          Originally posted by C0ckney
          the problem isn't with the immigrants, but rather with the ridiculous situation where people can refuse to get a job and have the rest of us pick the tab. the blame ultimately lies with the government for fostering a culture of dependancy whereby we pay nearly 5 million adults NOT to work.
          I agree, scrap the CAP.
          One day Canada will rule the world, and then we'll all be sorry.

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          • #6
            that too.
            "The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.

            "The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton

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            • #7
              You know, if you want to provide for people adequately such that they don't get screwed by poor economic conditions and not working, but don't want to disincent people from working, there's an easy solution.

              Give EVERYONE 300 pounds a month, unless they make >50k pounds a year or something like that (sliding scale around 50k pounds so there's no penalty for crossing the line). Then any money you make by working is a bonus. 300 pounds a month is probably enough to live on by yourself (minimally, true, but the idea is to encourage work).

              The only reason to have an unemployment dole is to encourage people not to work - which does have economic purposes itself in an economy that has nowhere to go but down, but you probably don't want to be adding people to such an economy...
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              • #8
                Originally posted by C0ckney
                the problem isn't with the immigrants, but rather with the ridiculous situation where people can refuse to get a job and have the rest of us pick the tab. the blame ultimately lies with the government for fostering a culture of dependancy whereby we pay nearly 5 million adults NOT to work.
                What about some type of community service requirement to people without jobs on welfare or unemployment? What kind of incentives do you have for people to take jobs?
                I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
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                • #9
                  kid, there are various schemes to get people back into paid employment, which i won't go into, except to say that they cost a lot of money and are pretty ineffective. i'm fairly ambivalent about schemes for voluntary or community work for the unemployed, because while they at least have them doing something useful, they do not address the root of the problem. the article alludes to the fact that there are plenty of jobs available in this country, it's just that many think they are too good, or are just too damn lazy, to take them. my point is that they should not have that choice.
                  "The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.

                  "The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton

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                  • #10
                    Well, the US does not have the same welfare state as Britain, and you certainly don't get Americans trying to get farm laborer jobs either.
                    If you don't like reality, change it! me
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                    • #11
                      There are lots of americans employed as farm laborers. They're called Nebraskans.
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                      I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by GePap
                        Well, the US does not have the same welfare state as Britain, and you certainly don't get Americans trying to get farm laborer jobs either.
                        While that may be somewhat true, alot of the farm labour jobs immigrants do in the US don't pay better than minimum wage like they do in the UK.
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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by C0ckney
                          kid, there are various schemes to get people back into paid employment, which i won't go into, except to say that they cost a lot of money and are pretty ineffective.
                          How would requiring people to work be ineffective? And yes that will cost something, but it seems like a worthwhile pursuit. The thing taht you don't want is a subculture of welfare recipients.
                          i'm fairly ambivalent about schemes for voluntary or community work for the unemployed, because while they at least have them doing something useful, they do not address the root of the problem.
                          What is the root of the problem, in your opinion?
                          the article alludes to the fact that there are plenty of jobs available in this country, it's just that many think they are too good, or are just too damn lazy, to take them. my point is that they should not have that choice.
                          I don't disagree with you, but what do you propose, and what is wrong with my proposal?
                          I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                          - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by GePap
                            Well, the US does not have the same welfare state as Britain, and you certainly don't get Americans trying to get farm laborer jobs either.
                            Farm labor jobs would actually pay well if businesses didn't employ immigrants.

                            Also, the fact that immigrants do these jobs creates a stigma.
                            I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                            - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by snoopy369
                              There are lots of americans employed as farm laborers. They're called Nebraskans.
                              Since when are Mexicans in Nebraska Nebraskans?
                              If you don't like reality, change it! me
                              "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
                              "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
                              "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

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