Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches....

Killinghome, North Lincolnshire.
TOTAL have sold a power station to an Italian company who have imported most of their workers from outside the UK. This lead toto pickets protesting outside the plant. The next day similar demonstrations took place outside other power stations and the police had to stop hundreds of angry Brits from driving to Immingham to protest at that power station.

Sympathy strikes are being arranged in several area's of British industry.
Less law abiding Brits are planning more drastic action.

This is a bad time to be a foriegn worker in Britain. Scapegoats are being looked for by many different groups of men who are afraid for their jobs and their futures.

It'll descend into a farce. People everywhere are overreacting to this crisis and it is manifesting itself in ways like you said, ArcticPaul.

Many Brits have been tolerant for a long time. When foreigners start taking liberties, that's when the backlash will come. I always remind myself that I am a guest here and don't attempt to rip off any systems.

The reaction was understandable. People just have a different interpretation of crossing the line.

Disgusting! Not only do we export jobs to India, import more than we export now companies we have sold off to foreign companies that remain in the UK are importing foreign employees - who the fcuking hell are the British supposed to work for????????????????????????? People have every right to get angry about this! Either we stop selling off and exporting jobs or there will be a very big explosion in this country of riots!

A difficult situation - But how can be solved?
Pass legislation that the employers have to employ local workers? Then you'll get the local labour taking the piss by demanding unreasonable wages.
Enforcing a national minimum wage for native and migrant workers? Then the big firms will up sticks and move to the EU / Asia where labour is dirt cheap.

No, times are hard at the moment and British workers will have to swallow their pride and accept reduced pay and worse conditions. Eventually the hand of the market will move the migrant workers back home.

Then again, thee's nothing stopping qualified Brits getting a job in another country. Oh sorry I forgot that none of them bothered to learn a foreign languae at school

That's a fair point about languages, Mr Bubbles. Languages are important funnily enough. I only really speak one language fluently but know Polish to quite a high level and have also retained my French from school and also Japanese which I used a lot for 2 years.

Many Brits are complacent when it comes to language tho it is a fault of the system as much as anything else.

The highest paid workers I met in Poland were English speakers (Australian and English) working in the financial sector.
They were both doing a course in beginners Polish.
Neither needed any language other than English for their jobs but they had met Polish women and wanted to learn the language for that reason.

One of them had lived in Krakow for 8 years and spoke about as much Polish as I did!


Not just BRITS. English speakers in general.
The world speaks English so there is less motivation to learn.

The jobs that go to foreigners are the low skilled jobs so a second language is not necessary.

I just saw on the news there that there has been a mass walkout at Grangemouth as well. I can completely sympathyse with the local workers when people are being imported from other countries to take their jobs. I have no problem with people travelling to other countries to work. I do it often, I love seeing different cultures, learning new languages and, in some cases, making more money. However specifically importing labour in order to cut wages is horrible. The owners of these companies really need to take a look at themselves and look at the big picture instead of looking to cut wages in the short term.

Not everyone wants upsticks and move to another country - not everyone wants to be away from their family for months on end. You make is sound so easy and clear cut. We should be thinking about building a country, not destroying it.


I studied the British Industrial Revolution to a high level and those words you spoke, means sending us back centuries....we are suppose to progress, not regress.

I understand your points Bubbles, but at a time when prices are rising and salaries are decreasing for the average working class person, not many people can actually cut the costs any further. Believe it or not, many more people are already living on the bread line - people go to work to simply pay bills and eat - but at least they have their dignity in tact by doing so, squeeze these people any further and you in the end make it impossible for them to continue to do this and some times taking benefits is the only option, as unbelievable as that sounds.

Yep. The govt has been pushing science and technology for along time in schools, possibly believing that Britain and the US would always be the backbone of the world's economies, and moving towards vocational courses in FE / HE - I think to increase competition in the graduate job market and reduce the wages of qualified staff - and now it's come round to bite them in the arse. Then again, there has been healthy immigration for decades now and there will be plenty of second generation bilinguals who have the chance of a lifetime.

Sigh. I wish my dad hadn't been so bloody lazy when I was young and pushed me to speak Polish.


The only good thing about this crisis is that those obnoxious little bitches will be the first ones to lose their jobs.

I see the poles are not commenting on this thread. I think they are getting hot under the collar and twiddling their thumbs trying to avoid eye contact.

Their are power station workers in several locations in scotland going on stirke and in wales, it is a nationwide uproar.

OK there have been a couple of crashes over the last decade or so but compared to most other countries, people have had it pretty good. Huge disposable incomes. 20 years ago, anyone could get a mortgage and buy a house. There was a nich cushy welfare state to fall back on if you experienced hard times (Hell, some people have even lived relatively comfortably on benefits for most of their lives). It's relatively common for people to emply untermenchen from other countries as domestic helps - looking after children, cleaning the house etc.

But if you look at the broader picture, this is not typical of history. No other period of history have the general population been able to live so comforably. It's a minor blip. We are coming to the end of the Post war party and it's time to pick up the bill for private borrowing, careless public sector spending and not to put too fine a point on it, greed.

Workers have to take a reality check. Accept the pay cuts. Don't buy the plasma telly. Repair clothes. Cook your own food. Don't go on holiday to Egypt this year. Look after the car yourself. Stop smoking. Give up alcohol. Entertain friends at home. Turn lights off when not using them.

Things will hopefully get better soon, but the current situation is an unavoidable fact of economic life. British workers just have to get on with it.

Hopefully. As for British workers, they have always got on with it Mr B, but the more of industry that is destroyed or exported the less chances there are for the British worker.

True.... British business doen't give a toss about their country. I'd like to see more local business in the future. Employing local people and looking after them. Globalisation is a bitch.

Then again, if the customer weren't willing to buy products manufactured in China, if they were willing to pay a little bit more and buy something made in Britain, the jobs would stay here. But people want cheap iPods, cars and mobiles so the firms flick their home country a v and drum up cheap foreign labour.

And herein lies the problem - :( But do we have a choice? Given the choice and I am being truthful, I would pay a little bit more for something made in this country - if you take in to consideration, the import costs ect., the costs probably wouldn't be too different.

Well put. Some people seem to think they have the right to this way of life. How can people who have enjoyed the trappings of cheap consumer goods now moan that their jobs are being taken for foreigners, who are better qualified than them? You can't have it both ways!

Surely people can see the irony of someone enjoying the benefits of employing a foreign cleaner on minimum wage, then moaning when a foreigner comes along and does their job more efficiently than them. Once again, you can't have it both ways!


I believe that this is actually illegal. So much for Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers!!


Then you have to make sure you have the skills to ensure that your are employable in the country you wish to reside. It's a free market I'm afraid. Why should the British be so scared of economic mobility? Probably because they don't have the skills required to work elsewhere. If someone can do my job better then me, then I can't expect to be employed.

It is something I have always admired about the Polish - the willingness to look elsewhere for work, to go where they can utilise their skills to optimise their income/way of life.


You say that, but I doubt it. Everyone wants the more cost effective option. Given the choice between two products of equal quality, you would take the cheaper one all day. It's a no brainer.

What we should be asking, is why has this Italian firm has employed foreign workers as opposed to British? From what I have read, they are being paid the same but are more specialised in the field. If this is the case, we should be aiming to improve the mechanisms for educating our workforce, and giving them the skills required to compete in the global employment market.

Otherwise, British workers will be left behind. It's the global economy, get used to it.

I already buy Fair Trade products, which are more expensive so please don't call me liar. Some of us, would rather pay a little bit more, maybe my mentality is slightly different to yours, seeing the bigger picture often makes it a bit clearer.


Not at all, but how is we only have a "free market" in the UK? It would seem everyone has the opportunity here, yet do you honestly think that these opportunties are on offer in the countries these people come from? Don't you grasp the fact that we are a tiny Island? There are only so many jobs, why do think the NHS changed it's Policy for emplying doctors from overseas (outside of the EU).

Are you going to evening classes in "how to be patronising" ?

I think that the vast majority of British workers are just "getting on with it", but surely anyone would react if they were going to be got rid of in favour of cheaper alternatives ?

Most people need a certain level of income in order to survive and keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. I'm sure that for many of those men, the Sky subscription etc went ages ago.


I would also pay a little more to have something "Made In Britain", if I could find such a thing.

We need millionaires who are not trying to become billionaires by importing cheap labour.

The rich should be happy to employ the people who want to stay in this country. Not just save evry penny to buy a house in Gdansk or Peshawar or Kurdistan.

These employment savings are short term when the consumers are losing their jobs and their ability to consume!

Britain has enough wealth for every subject (who is willing to work) to have a good standard of living but employment agencies have imported millions of people with far lower expectations.

I like the idea if a 'United States of Europe' but I'm sick of Asian and African new-comers who have no love for me or my culture.

I'd round them up and put them on the first ship out of Europe.

Shareholders want their cut too.

Define new-comers.

There is a real problem with immigration even if you think/hope that ultimately it's a good thing (within limits as within the EU).

Namely, many short term immigrants are willing to live at bare sustenance levels. This works well in terms of remittances to the homeland (or saving a nest egg for a better future back home) but it forces locals to also live at bare sustenance levels in their own country or prices them out of the job market. Once enough employers go for cheaper-at-all-costs labor essentially all are forced to (look up tragedy of the commons).

Basically the UK has followed the US lead of mass immigration to cow the local population into not making uncomfortable demands (like a living wage) and to create an economy based entirely on credit and consumption (effectively eliminating savings and production). How's that been working out lately? Is this really a model to follow anymore?

What about unqualified Brits? What about Brits with families? What about Brits with mortgages?
What about equality?

Playing on some sort of "guilty for only being able to speak English" is no argument here.
I know I have the ability to learn another language enough to be able to work somewhere else, but I am (like most people) not available to just get up and move. Also, I happen to hold no qualifications, just a vast knowledge of the line of work I am in right now. My best bet is to stay exactly where I am (half way up in a small company where I won't be one of the first to go). Sadly for me, the first to go seem to have been my Polish colleagues who were only taken on through an agency. But that's no headline.

it`s got nothing to do with anti immigration. it`s about using foreign contractors under the pretence of a skills shortage in the local area, when there is not a skills shortage.

brown mouthed off and now his words have returned to bite him on the arse.

I don't understand why people are so much against immigration.... the British immigrated/colonized everywhere years and years ago and yet you see nobody complaining.

read my comment above.

Yes well, that maybe so, but the people that were involved in such decisions are long gone.

It's 2009 and we need to deal with the here and now !

Well immigration is supposedly good for the economy....and Canada has tons of immigrants and we barely complain about it yet the UK seems to make a huge deal out of it

We're making "a huge deal out of it" due to the numbers involved, not because of immigration itself.

There will always be some that will be against any kind of immigration, but I think you will find that most decent folk just want to see some common-sense applied and some controls in place.

The problem is analogous to teaching. How? I hear you ask. Well, when you admit sb to a certain status, relegating them is hard. When they have gotten into the UK, it's hard to expel them without due cause. They are permitted to be there. Trust me, a furore starts when you question that.

I hear what you are saying, but something radical needs to be done and it needs to be done soon.

On another thread, a while ago, someone predicted something like this would start happening and that the end result would be race-riots.

All I can say is that I don't want to be anywhere nearby if/when it happens.