General Chat

Yes but then it goes back to what TW said...about sharing housing and utility costs....lol. There's no easy answer x

"..... they would have to pay higher wages. But that is not such a bad thing we don't want slave labour rates for our people."

and that brings me back to where i was really... we all want a decent wage, ...but we also want cheap food so my thoughts were less about the programme itself really and more about what we expect and what we will 'settle for'.......

edit , add, I wonder , would I buy British asparagus at the higher price, but less of it...to support a minimum wage favouring british workers .. or buy it cheap and more of it to favour myself?

From the Fenland Citizen

A CONTROVERSIAL BBC documentary filmed in Wisbech has whipped up a storm of outrage among locals angry at the way the town and its people were portrayed.
MP Malcolm Moss, leading the angry backlash, said he was 'spitting nails' after watching the programme narrated by economist and radio 4 presenter Evan Davis screened on Wednesday night.

The MP for North-East Cambridgeshire was disgusted with the
narrow view taken by the documentary entitled ' The Day the Immigrants Left' and said that while they had been happy to ask him for help prior to making the programme they had not come back to him for a comment.

He said the film-makers had been 'very selective' in the portrayal of the issue of migrant workers and failed to look at wider impact the influx of foreigners has had on the town and its resources.

The documentary took 11 volunteers and put them in place of migrant workers in four businesses: an asparagus farm, a potato factory, an Indian restaurant and as a builder for a property landlord.

Mr Davis explained they had found their recruits, all unemployed people, after sticking up flyers around Wisbech and had chosen them from hundreds of applicants.

The 11 were then filmed as they tried to fill the shoes of the migrants with varying success.

Some of the 11 failed to turn up for their first day of work, others walked out half-way through their stint, while the rest knuckled down and did their best.

However, the programme concluded that without the immigrants these businesses would not survive.

But Mr Moss said: "It was a very jaundiced view. It was almost as if he set out to prove his own conclusions on the situation. He set the question 'would these businesses close down if the migrant workers left' and then set out to prove the point - it is total nonsense. All of the business were in existence prior to the immigration and all that work was done by local people."

He said the film failed to explore the effect of the new arrivals on schools, GP surgeries and other resources including pushing up the price of rented accommodation, adding: "You can't do justice to an extremely complex issue in an hour programme. It might make good TV but I don't think it's helpful in communicating the truth of the situation. It was very misleading."

He said March farmer Victor Aveling had always relied on migrant workers to harvest his asparagus.

And they interviewed a headteacher who said there were no problems with the large number of foreign children coming into her infants school, but failed to ask whether there was any extra funding to help cope with the influx.

"The implications on the local community were far greater than that displayed. It was a jaundiced and false view. It seemed to say that if migrant workers weren't there, the industries wouldn't exist. But that's nonsense. They are not new and not reliant on migrant workers."

Mr Moss concluded: "Serious displacement has taken place, it is difficult to know where the local workforce has gone. Some new jobs have been created at Tesco and other supermarkets and a lot of women who might have found work there, others might have been part-time and not bothers, I suspect many have gone into the black economy or are on some sort of benefit - but it is difficult to get figures other than those claiming Job Seekers allowance in Wisbech.

"To be honest I was spitting nails after watching this, it suggested these businesses would not be here without migrant workers - but that is not true, they would have to pay higher wages. But that is not such a bad thing we don't want slave labour rates for our people."

Mr Moss was not the only one to hit out.

Jim Samuels from March also thought the BBC deceived the public.

And said: "With the wages being paid for those jobs, which are very often in remote locations, the workers would not be able to afford to run a car to get there, no buses go out there and the only way they can get on one of the gangmaster buses is to be part of the gang.

"I am absolutely disgusted at the way the programme was portrayed."

In an hour, no one is going to tell the complete story, and that type of programme is setting out its stall from the outset...ie that it is taking a specific premise,'migrants take our jobs' and running an experiment if you like to see what the alternative would be...

interesting bit in one respect was the asparagus grower , who said that if he had to pay the minimum wage to english workers he would have to raise the price of asparagus so high he just couldn't compete in the marketplace... so has the minimum wage, whilst being a well intentioned ideal, actually made the situation worse for workers now we are in a recession...(that's a question , not nec' my opinion lol)

Absolutely spot on TW.


I don't disagree the E Europeans are very hard working and the locals shown in the programme in the main appeared ignorant and work shy (were they representative of all the long term unemployed in the area or cherry picked to prove a point. for the producers..who knows???)

It needed to go further to get to the heart of some of the other reasons why the locals may have felt disaffected or resentful.

One look at the local head teacher and the way she glossed over the strain the new non English speaking pupils have put on the resources of the school told me that the whole story wasn't being told x

I watched the programme, and no it did NOT show that immigrant workers can do a better job than british workers. Quite the opposite, it showed the British worker CAN work just as well.

The problem is, that the immigrant workers are willing to work for the minimum wage, and work long hours for the money too, whereas for British workers that is just not viable.

Immigrant workers share accommodation, reducing the outlay each has to make, so £500 a month rent, shared between six people...you work it out. Same for electricity, gas, council tax and so on. Compare that to one man bringing up a family, with ALL the bills, and rent or mortgage to pay, but he won't be getting the money of six workers will he?

I used to do some of those jobs myself. I've worked in a potato packing on piece work, and in a celery plant, picked potatoes in November, planted celery in March, picked strawberries at 5.00am, weeded fields in the July heat, onion wringing in August through to October, trimmed leeks fresh in from the fields in January, still frozen solid.

Cold, wet dirty jobs, back-breaking work, and if locals like myself didn't do it, the travellers would be queing to take our places for a pittance. Now its the immigrant workers.

BUT, I will say they will put in the hours. HOw many British workers would put in a double shift in a factory, then work four hours in a nightclub, six days a week? I'll tell you...NONE.

But it's not the jobs that the immigrant workers really have the biggest impact on, it's the health and education resources, and that is the problem that needs to be tackled. Unfortunately, those issues were glossed over really.

lol George, the mobile phone should be banned ;) i had a friend of my sons do some painting for me he did a good job to be fair) but it was as if his mobile was stuck to the side of his head lol.

Aveyronnaise my friend is in London and has said the same about builders she has had quotes and work done by. My nephew was encouraged to go to Uni, but wasn't academic but had practical skills and a good attitude and chose to stay where he had been working part-time, which was by far the best thing for him as he made a big success of it...he could well have gone to uni and been at the end of it, jobless.

We once stayed at a small country pub in Herefordshire, where they did B & B.
The landlord told us how dedicated his Polish staff member was. When she couldn't go in to help him one Saturday morning, because of illness, rather than let him down she asked her Polish boyfriend, (who worked elsewhere) to go and help out.

Gwyn

I know someone will give me a b********g for saying this, but for several years now I think the English workers are getting lazy, want top money for little effort.
Think more about their bloody mobile phones than actually getting on with the job in hand, and seemingly cant wait to get down to the pub.

Well where do we start on this one? Yes we HAVE upped our expectations too much IMHO. In a country where almost everyone has a right to go to university (regardless of intellectual ability) it is not unnatural to think we are just a bit too good to do manual work.

I was the first person in my family to go to university - it doesn't mean I was the "cleverest". I was the culmination of a lot of manual work by people who had ASPIRATIONS but little EXPECTATION. Nothing was taken for granted.

I have three beautiful, intelligent and talented daughters. I would like to think they have been imbued with an understanding of where they came from (working class to "middle class" whatever that means) but can I get them to do crappy summer jobs like I did to fund my luxuries whilst at university? Nope.

Personally I happen to think that grammar schools were great for making children from VERY ordinary homes feel good about themselves and their abilities. Interesting, therefore, that they were largely abolished by the political party that claims to represent working people.

This doesn't really answer your question, does it? But all I can add is that my builder in London (utterly dependable, sensibly priced and takes utmost pride in his work) is Lithuanian. And a doctor by training.

Hello Gwyn and George, yes that was pretty much the overall impression.

The polish builders did work hard which I have heard from friends is par for the course, though the English guy they showed did so also,and was given a few weeks work on the back of it. Some different ideas on how to do things but the boss said he would employ them ( ie Polish workers) every time for their commitment to the job.

George - your experience reminded me of when we built an extension to our house over 25 years ago. We did a lot of the work ourselves but hired people to dig footings, lay bricks etc.

The worst workers were the ground workers and we vowed never again to pay 'by the day' as our expectations of a day's work were much longer hours than the workers'!
Saturdays were the worst, off to the pub at lunchtime and hardly anything done after that. The best worker of this bunch (and a non drinker) was a lovely Irishman!

Hello Rambling Rose,
I never watched that program unfortunately, but I believe it showed that the immigrant workers were better than the british ones.

Before my accident I was a builder, and often had contracts on various building sites etc., and I began to notice that the average shall we say English worker seemed to want to arrive late and do as little as possible.

Last year I had some work done in my house and got a local building company in, Because of my accident i am unable to do anything myself.
I actually had to get rid of the company who were doing,( or not doing) the work because they were late every day, were seemingly on their mobile phones all the time, left a mess and started to go home at 3pm.
I wasn't happy with the quality of their workmanship either.

Had two polish guys come and do the work, first rate workers who were tidy, cracked on with the job, and were seemingly proud of the work they carried out, and they didn't disappear at 3pm.
I think it does tend to make our workers look lazy and unprofessional.

George

I have yet to see all the programme, -have recorded it, as I only caught some of it.

There didn't seem to be much 'drive'. Some of the workers couldn't even be bothered to turn up for work because they'd had a hard night out the previous day.

Gwyn

"the day the immigrants left"? BBC1 last week or so

"Foreign workers, coming over here, stealing our jobs… It’s a grumble that keeps growing louder, especially since the almost overnight influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe six years ago.

But why is it so easy for people from other countries to find work, when the unemployed will tell you there are no jobs to apply for?

Evan Davis is in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, to conduct an unusual, contentious experiment. How well, he wants to know, could British workers do the jobs that are currently carried out by workers from abroad?

The answer seems so obvious and yet the results are unlikely to leave you bursting with British pride.

On an asparagus farm, in a curry house, a factory and on a building site, a few staff are given the day off so unemployed locals can prove they’re as capable as anyone. That’s if they even bother turning up…"

I found it very interesting to see the contrast between the English worker's expectations, and the way the migrant workers quite literally 'put their backs' into it.

I was reading in the metro today about recession hit S Korea where 500 people applied for 15 jobs as binmen, they were whittled down by a 100 metre race carrying 20kg of rice...

it gave me pause to wonder if we in this country have a tendency to 'devalue' certain types of work? Bin men, cleaners,potato packers, etc ...

when we look back at census records most of us have ag labs, factory workers and the like... have we upped our expectations so high that we no longer value 'hard graft' jobs in the same way? ( not that white collar jobs can't be 'hard graft' but they tend to be mental hard graft not physical as such.)

Opinions?

xx