Not before Ine.

[KateLMead]

As I have been told by the family "and others "I do go on a bit. However I am going to go on again.
I have written my opinion on B'Liar and his effect on this country that has utterly changed all we ever stood for, and this situation has continued since he opened those pearly gates that has allowed millions of immigrants entry including crooks, gang masters, traffickers of drugs and innocent women,rapists etc when he got the message that there was no way he would be re elected.
I stated at the time and since he was the man who has destroyed this country.He is a blatant liar like his wife's who is in the news!
We learn inspite of his questionable time as Prime Minister, he is aiming (some hope) to top the bill in the EU, nothing would surprise me. We are in the midst in my opinion of a "silent war", it will be interesting to learn who will be the winners. Last night I watched a programme on Benefit scroungers, well I was not overly surprised when the Romany and others were filmed arriving purely to claim every benefit available, building luxurious properties from those benefits that have run into thousands, and those same individual is like many others bringing friends to UK to do the same milk the syste,..including claiming unemployment benefits if they are out of a job or have never even had a job here...the Polish woman who has opened a Cafe from her husbands work and "The benefits she receives' and states she is entitled to every penny. Nothing is done about this farce. Rant over..

[Workingman]

Kate, it is a bit of Curate's egg. I have seen these benefits programmes and wondered if they have cherry picked certain groups then tried to make out that they are the norm. I am not sure they are, but I do have some first hand experiences with migrant workers.

1. I helped a friend set up his lettings agency. He would get Poles and those from the Baltic states come in and take on a property suitable for six people - not student accommodation. They would put in maybe ten or 12 people to share the costs. They all had jobs. The landlords did not seem to mind as the money kept coming in.

2. I was on contract work with Royal Mail. Many of those already mentioned worked the late or night shifts as agency workers. The work was physically hard and boring. They were young, single and well qualified and only intended staying for three to five years to accumulate a pile before returning home. No benefits for them.

3. I often use a continental supermarket for things I cannot get in other places. I nearly always see a young person, mid-twenties, hand over a wad of cash. The owner puts it in a counting machine and they agree on the amount. They both sign the front of the printed out receipt - the customer gets the white copy, the shop owner the blue one, the original signed copy goes back in the machine with the money. That cash is going to Poland or the Baltics.

4. Leeds has always had a large Polish community, so is a bit of a draw. It also now has lots of Polish bus drivers and last week I took in parcel for a neighbour, the delivery man was Polish.

None of the above are benefits scroungers in any shape or form, but they are doing jobs anyone could do and they are sending money home so the UK economy does not really benefit. Hope this helps.

[Suff]

I must admit I have similar issues as WM on this subject. There are people who come to Britain to abuse the system, but not many of them are Poles. When the Poles come they are often young and single. If they are married and have children they bring the children and live in the system. Often they have two jobs, live in accommodation which our own unemployed refuse to live in and simply camp out to get a good head start in life at home.

There is nothing wrong with that, it is our own services which are not given the money which their taxes pay for which causes the biggest issue. I know I complain that the influx of immigrants break down the basic services, but I'm not particularly complaining about the immigrants themselves, I'm complaining about our own government won't either recognise or deal with the situation.

Whilst there is abuse of the system, it is minor from the EU crowd compared to the rest. What incenses me completely is that there are hundreds of thousands of others who come in, demand living, benefits, "rights" and the vast majority of EU immigrants who come, work and leave, get tarred with the brush and those demanding are left to carry on with their unacceptable practises. Why? Because those EU workers are easy to target. After all it's not racist....

So why would I prefer that the UK left the EU? Because if you want to solve a problem you must first recognise that problem. The way to do that is to remove the EU angle and focus on the rest. Right now, if you have been looking, you will see that Macedonia and the Balkan states are closing their borders to Greece. Why? Because the vast majority of the people coming over that border are not Syrian or Iraqi. They are from the Indian subcontinent, North Africa and Afghanistan. 75% of them. Of whom the vast majority will be rejected asylum but those countries are only just beginning to realise that they won't be able to repatriate these failed asylum seekers as their home countries will refuse to accept them without the correct documentation.

I'm just waiting until Greece finally realises that giving them a Schengen Visa and an air ticket will be their best bet for dealing with the issue. Good for the airlines, hell for everyone else when the 6 month visa expires and you just can't get them out.

If we don't get out of the EU it will soon come to the consciousness of the EU countries that if they give these people citizenship they will just flood into Britain or Germany and there is not one single thing which we can do about it unless we close our borders to all EU citizens.

If we're going to do that then we might as well just get on with it now and vote Leave....

[Workingman]

I do not have a problem with some immigration, especially the Europeans. Most of them, especially from poorer members, come here to make money and go home. However, there are some chancers, and that's where I draw the line. The thing is though, there are rules within the EU to deal with many of them, it is just that we do not used them forcibly enough and never have done.

When it come to RoW migrants I do have another side. These people should be turned 180º and sent back, no questions asked. There is no set of rules anywhere to stop us doing that. They are, by definition, illegal immigrants. Even if their countries are ravaged by war, turmoil and religious intolerance they have already passed through any number of safe countries to get here.

Where I do have a problem with immigration it often comes down to employers and their excuses. Take the bus and delivery drivers and the Royal Mail bag throwers. Those are jobs open to just about anyone. The migrants doing them do not have any special skills lacking in the UK workforce. So why do they get employed above UK workers?

I have my thoughts, do you?

[Aggers]

I'm afraid that my views are somewhat extreme in this regard, in that I am not very happy
in allowing any foreigners into this country, unless there is a definite need to do so.

I'm sure we would be a much happy community if, in the past, we had discouraged all these
foreigners from coming here. I can't remember seeing any when I was a child.

Who's stupid idea was it to open our borders to all these aliens?

[Diflower]

What, like the Vikings?
How far do you want to take it?
Why anyone but aborigines in Australia, native Indians in the US?

[Workingman]

Di, that is a bit silly. How far do you want to go back?

We Brits are a mix of Picts, Scots, Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans - we are mongrels. All of them came after Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic tribes from Europe in pre-history, and many of those tribes evolved from incursions from the east.

The British, mainly English, did not exist till after the Romans left, and that is largely down to the Saxons and Danes. If I go back far enough I am a Brigantine.... some would say an English tribe, but they would have seen themselves as an ethnic group in today's terms.

[Aggers]

What, like the Vikings?
How far do you want to take it?
Why anyone but aborigines in Australia, native Indians in the US?

You know what I mean.

[Diflower]

Yes of course I do
But I did also really mean, how far back do you want to go?
Hungarians came here in fair numbers (I don't know how many) in and after 1956, a lot of them arrived penniless and dependent on charity, loads of Jamaicans after WW2, and plenty of others before and since, like the Ugandans.
I know there are many other nationalities, they're just the ones associated with major events that came immediately to mind.

Where exactly should it have stopped?

[TheOstrich]

I have to be honest, I find all these arguments about Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and Romans and Aborigines and so on spurious. What does it matter if we hail from the Dumnonii, the Icini or the Catuvelaunii, or the flippin' Romans? The past is the past, we should focus on the here and now. The problem is not so much the concept of immigration - it is the amount of immigration in a very short time span. For example, 320,000 a year (latest figures) = a metropolis the size of Birmingham in just over 3 years.

There is also the problem that the sheer numbers coming in do not, and have not, resulted in integration. We seem to be happy to lie down and subjugate our English culture to them. But sorry, personally I do not like walking down a street full of Polski Sklep or Dobry Smak shops, turn a corner and face a madrassa and a mosque. Like Aggers, I preferred "my country" the way it was. This is no longer "my country"; I don't identify with it and I certainly wouldn't fight for it!

There was an article in the Mail (which has been taken down, I think, and I didn't get to read it in depth) accusing Blair of deliberately allowing 2 million immigrants into this country during his tenure. Assuming this revelation (from someones autobiography of him, I believe) is correct, then for this, as well as war crimes, he should be brought to account. Why is he allowed to remain "untouchable"?