Is UK the new cradle of antipolonism?

It is probably worthwhile as it gives that bit more legitimacy when you can vote and take a stand on issues rather than passively observe. It makes sense if you feel you have meaningful ties as I do.

Delph, I don't think figures would be allowed to be distorted as it would a Brit on Brit crime then. People retain their ethnicity and that's how the police record their crime statistics. Nationality is quite a different kettle of fish.

That's because she was just 2 years of age when she left Ireland. I know a woman who left Poland when she was just 1 she considers herself strictly American. Her being Polish she considers as her roots, something second. Though like I said she was just 1 she has no recollection of Poland doesn't have friends there and speaks bad Polish. It all depends on far and if one has assimilated into their new homeland.

What's funny - I have another friend who has a Dutch mother. We didn't know (she speaks flawless English) at all - she has an English name, and we only found out when we heard her on the phone speaking "a funny language". Of course, the question was "hey, what language was your mother speaking?" - for our friend to say "Dutch, she's from there". Yet - you'd never guess at all, and she never made a point of mentioning it.

(of course, she'd been in the UK since she was a student, but)

Nice to see you trotting out that old lie one more time. Perhaps you could be so kind as to tell us the price for which Britain sold whatever it was you claim that she sold? I mean, we all know the price at which Poland sold her Ukrainian allies to the USSR for, but what price do you claim Britain charged for Poland?


Really? How does that request to leave square with the Polish Resettlement Act? Oh, of course it does not and you are simply telling yet more of your lies about history.

This has all been done before to the death. 'New' cradle, not old cradle.

Id like to see that too, because when I shop in various stores, there are these lazy ungrateful Brits who think these jobs are beneath them, doing just that..in fact..come to think of it...who the hell was doing these jobs before we joined the EU or the enlargement of the EU or before mass immigration to the UK, who worked in the factories and cotton mills?

The mantra "Brits are lazy" is just pure and simply propaganda!

it's one that boils my **** as well.

I agree in general but it is undeniable that farmers have problems finding British workers to harvest crops. A few days ago there was a report on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today programme on seasonal workers from eastern Europe. According to an interviewed farmer, the best worker on the farm earned 100GBP/day, with the average being 60 pounds. The Lithuanian and Polish workers were delighted to be earning that kind of money, but the farmer said that he simply couldn't find British people willing to work hard for good money.

Polonophobia in Germany? When I lived there, I almost never heard anyone talking about you and the ones that did, were German farmers and they were saying that Poles are hard working farm helpers, that's all.


that alone doesn't make them lazy. Maybe they just don't pay enough for them to do that job and they choose to work elsewhere instead.

£100 per day - me thinks that farmer was telling porkies..most if not all pay minimum wage, some dont even pay that for seasonal jobs (ilegal I know but they do it!), which used to be done by students or backpackers...How many Brits do you know, who would turn their noses up at £500 or even £300 per week? Id also love to know which agency he got his workers through and if local workers were even given the opportunity of these jobs..might explain a few things.

good point.

Or that one Pole on that BBC documentary 'The Day the Immigrants Left' who made 176 pounds by picking half a ton of asparagus. LOL speedy

Incredible though it may seem, you really can earn this kind of money on farms in the UK. I used to do it myself in my student days. I'm going back to the beginning of the 90's but even then I earned between 100 and 120 a day grafting roses. OK, it was a specialist job, but some crops also paid well, as I'm sure they still do, e.g. brocolli. I had a student at my university several years ago who went to England and earned 60 quid a day picking strawberries. If you don't believe me, just do a little research.

exactly! and how much of that money did the agency give the worker? did the agency supply the accommodation? Was the rent taken from their wages? Employ people from another country, they'll need accommodation. that's one hold you can't have over locals.

It's easier and cheaper for farmers, or any employer for that matter, to use and agency than advertise.

I can tell you that in the Horeca sector in London it was illegal immigrants.

so what are you trying to say, that they asked their own people first and they refused to work for a 100 a day? Of course that would support the idea that they are lazy.

Amathyst. Years ago benefits were not as generous as they are now, and people were more willing to get their backs bent. Agencies (usually "gangmasters") used to exploit farmhands disgracefully but since the Morecombe Bay incident a few years ago, when illegal Chinese workers drowned when cut off by the tide, a body called the Gangmasters Licensing Authority has come into being. This body regulates gangmasters and has successfully prosecuted many shady guys.

guess who. Yes. You probably know that working all day in hot sun on an exposed field is extremely hard. At the risk of sounding more like an old fart than I actually am, a lot of young British people would rather take welfare benefits than work. btw 100 a day is only possible for the fastest, most skillful workers, but 50-70 pounds is entirely possible.

Just out of curiosity, how much does a British national or a foreign legal resident get out of benefits in the UK? money, health insurance, him/his family. I've read that out of the developed nations the United States gives the least, supposedly the Danes are most generous?!

In the north it was students and backpackers.


A lot of my friends went off to the South of France for the summer picking grapes - it was more for the experience and the fun of meeting people than for the money also had friends that went and did camp America for the summer - students dont care about the cash its the adventure! They dont have famlies to support.


My friend lives in Derbyshire opposite a rather large farm in the countryside, she sees a mini bus load of non lazy Brits :) turning up at the crack of dawn every day...I doubt the farmer put an ad in the local post office! I also doubt they're getitng £100 per day either..


It would IF someone was being paid £100 per day (how many hours does one have to do for that kind of money btw?)..


Yeah and we all know that wages have been slashed since the good old 90s

PennBoy. I'm way out of touch with the UK benefits system, but I'd be interested to know myself. Perhaps some lazy b@stard can tell us!

jobseekers-allowance.com/JSA-amount.html

You'll note its not exactly a lot, god knows how people manage on it my home phone and mobile comes to £50 per month, not to mention utilities..puts into perspective really.


We dont have to pay for health insurance, we have a national health service that provides for us, if someone isnt working they even get free dental care and prescriptions and glasses (if they need them)..but gas and electric and food are expensive. A person who is unemployed will also get their rent paid or assistance with their mortgage.

There are two types of benefits, income based non income based, strangely enough, if a person has worked for 25 years and a person has never worked, they both get paid the same £64 per week...ridiculous!

It isn't the hours, it is the work. Farm work is piece rate, so if you don't work hard, you earn not much. If you take it easy and have regular fag breaks plus an hour for lunch, you'll earn maybe £30 to £40 a day. Not what the farmer wants; he wants his crops in and as fast as possible without damaging them.

As I said, it's been a long time since I did it, but 11 or 12 hours a day, five days a week.


Why do you doubt it? It's possible. I'm not really concerned whether you believe me or not. I have no axe to grind. I'd tell you what the best rose budder earned in my day, but you definitely wouldn't believe me!

I guess that's why people in America pay lower taxes, we don't have that unless we purchase health insurance.

We have National Insurance that's a separate payment which takes care of our pension (which is also a pittence) and health care I think its about 11% of my salary which I pay each month.

well, at least you're honest


see, now you're saying that they're lazy. Do you consider this to be some kind of English phenomenon to live on welfare? Do you have any numbers on how many of your countrymen live there on welfare?


all of it supports my idea that they would work for that kind of money. I can't imagine anyone (unless one has enough cash) who would refuse to work for any amount of money, you've mentioned above, especially in this terrible economy all around the world?

I have to ask you one more question, why do so many Poles believe that just about anyone out there is lazy but you guys?


another great point sis :-)

I 'm not quite sure if this would work in the States. Big corporations get their way through corruption we'd be paying double or triple for everything.

You see,its like this GW, the welfare payment versus earning a wage is complicated by the simple fact that,on welfare,while the cash in your hand each fortnight is a pittance as said before you are eligable for other benefits such as free dental treatment, help with rent payments etc, once you take a job,even if after tax and expenses you have little more in your pocket than you would have had on welfare all those other forms of help are pulled away from you. So,unless you can be 100% that the job you take will pay very well and be a secure position long term it is very often not financialy viable for a lot of people to bother coming off welfare.

Specificaly regarding agricultural work, farmers in general are greedy barstewards and,surprisingly enough lots of farms are in very low population areas. Im in farming country myself and I can tell you a simple reason why local farmers couldnt get local people to work for them......who these days with bills to pay and families to feed can afford to only have secure work for 4 maybe 6 months a year? No one of course,so,anyone who can and wants to work gets other jobs ,year round work, the Poles etc who do the jobs on farms are generaly youngsters ,many of them of course having uprooted a thousand miles across europe are unlikely to care if they get moved around the UK to farms that need their work or to live in shared accomadation.


Yups, you dont think the NHS pays cost for its services do you? Thats why we hate the creeping privitisation of our health services,the more companies involved looking for a profit the more companies pump up their prices............ah well,at least if I loose my job then get the big C I wont have to sell my house to pay for treatment.

it makes perfect sense to me but as I said earlier, it doesn't mean at all the you guys are lazy as he was trying to prove it.


common sense and again no prove for you being lazy.


exactly what I said above, you guys are looking for other jobs instead which is absolutely understandable.

I'm tired of them always calling us lazy all the time. Lazy people don't achieve anything and despite all our problems (everyone has them now), comparing to many others, we're still in a pretty good shape.

Coming from a farming family myself, I feel I must take objection to that comment.
What you should have said is some farmers are tight barstewards. This was the case in Tolpuddle in the late 1800s, when a farmer tried to cut the wages of his labourers. A group of them withheld their labour and started the birth of the trade union movement in this country. Victorian farmers couldn't bus in groups of Poles to do the work for less, if they could, they would have done.