.....Or, as we say here: Goodbye: it was REALLY nice to know you.
I’ve heard a lot of criticism of Poles and other Eastern Europeans over the last few years. It seems that everyone has a mump about them. “They come over here taking our jobs”... or as comedian Marcus Brigstocke said: ” ’doing‘ our jobs”.
And of course because they are often good looking and that bit different, with the sexy accent, there are the whinges that they take our women too.
The theory goes that as they will work for the minimum wage, employers will take them on in place of the local labour who have debts to pay, and the Child Support Agency chasing them if they take a job and, as a result, require something in the region of £450 per week to keep them and all their various and sundry offspring to a wide variety of the local female population (and believe me, it’s true).
Of course, around Dundee where the wage paid by most of the factories (except the really good ones like Michelin and Day International, and until they closed down recently, NCR) is the minimum wage or a penny or two above it, and was long before the Eastern Europeans arrived here... and will be long after they are gone, that theory doesn’t quite pan out locally. But I accept that in the big cities where wages are far higher that may be a fair comment.
As for them pinching all our females, I’ve found some soap and water before you splash on the “Coolwater” sometimes works wonders...oh, and clean teeth work too!
So, many people who are not employers will be happy to see them melting off back to Poland now that the misery of living here is greater than the misery of living in an ex-communist country.
But not me.
Oh no.
I live in a street of tenements which is a mixture of owned and 'buy to let' flats. Because of uncertainties, some years ago, over the possibility of a new road going through the area, the place has become run down. So what we have are low rent properties, which, until the Eastern Europeans arrived, were increasingly being rented to ....erm, how shall I put this.... undesirables. Drunks, druggies, people you’d rather never meet never mind live near to. Music poured from open windows, kids ran riot over everything, rubbish was strewn about the street, shouting and screaming and the sounds of murder and mayhem ensued when it appeared one of them had intruded upon the favours of his next door neighbour’s good lady... or the other way round... who knows....who cares?
And the turnover was awesome... but as one set moved out (in the middle of the night), another set, just as repugnant, moved in.
Then along came the Poles. They must have been a godsend to the “buy to renters”. No more moonlight flits. They kept their homes clean, cultivated the back yards and grew vegetables and worked most of the time, so you never heard them... and they actually put their rubbish in the bins provided, like human beings. They didn’t by and large have any thieving children and they had no interest in scoring people’s cars or puncturing their tyres. Life became bearable again.
I expect you can guess what’s happened now that the Eastern Europeans have gone back....
I’ve heard a lot of criticism of Poles and other Eastern Europeans over the last few years. It seems that everyone has a mump about them. “They come over here taking our jobs”... or as comedian Marcus Brigstocke said: ” ’doing‘ our jobs”.
And of course because they are often good looking and that bit different, with the sexy accent, there are the whinges that they take our women too.
The theory goes that as they will work for the minimum wage, employers will take them on in place of the local labour who have debts to pay, and the Child Support Agency chasing them if they take a job and, as a result, require something in the region of £450 per week to keep them and all their various and sundry offspring to a wide variety of the local female population (and believe me, it’s true).
Of course, around Dundee where the wage paid by most of the factories (except the really good ones like Michelin and Day International, and until they closed down recently, NCR) is the minimum wage or a penny or two above it, and was long before the Eastern Europeans arrived here... and will be long after they are gone, that theory doesn’t quite pan out locally. But I accept that in the big cities where wages are far higher that may be a fair comment.
As for them pinching all our females, I’ve found some soap and water before you splash on the “Coolwater” sometimes works wonders...oh, and clean teeth work too!
So, many people who are not employers will be happy to see them melting off back to Poland now that the misery of living here is greater than the misery of living in an ex-communist country.
But not me.
Oh no.
I live in a street of tenements which is a mixture of owned and 'buy to let' flats. Because of uncertainties, some years ago, over the possibility of a new road going through the area, the place has become run down. So what we have are low rent properties, which, until the Eastern Europeans arrived, were increasingly being rented to ....erm, how shall I put this.... undesirables. Drunks, druggies, people you’d rather never meet never mind live near to. Music poured from open windows, kids ran riot over everything, rubbish was strewn about the street, shouting and screaming and the sounds of murder and mayhem ensued when it appeared one of them had intruded upon the favours of his next door neighbour’s good lady... or the other way round... who knows....who cares?
And the turnover was awesome... but as one set moved out (in the middle of the night), another set, just as repugnant, moved in.
Then along came the Poles. They must have been a godsend to the “buy to renters”. No more moonlight flits. They kept their homes clean, cultivated the back yards and grew vegetables and worked most of the time, so you never heard them... and they actually put their rubbish in the bins provided, like human beings. They didn’t by and large have any thieving children and they had no interest in scoring people’s cars or puncturing their tyres. Life became bearable again.
I expect you can guess what’s happened now that the Eastern Europeans have gone back....
