Scribblings

Diversity can be the spice of life

Excellent news that at least 72% of 35-44 year olds are not racist, unthinking bigots. Now let’s hope the popular press and the pub pundits stop spreading their grossly exaggerated claims that Bulgarians and Romanians are about to flood into the UK come the New Year in order to live on our poxy benefits. I’m sure a tiny number will do just that but the overwhelming majority will come here to work, settle in for a while at least and learn English.

We had our block refurbished over three months in the summer. The small team, from a company run by an Irishman, consisted of a Pole, a Romanian and an Albanian who was the foreman (Albania is not currently part of the EU). They did an excellent job with good attention to detail, were friendly, polite and bloody hard-working.

These claims are at least partly a ‘gypsy scare’ but it’s more than that in total. The headline in the Daily Mail today effectively repeats the common assertion that England is full. Earlier in the year one of the papers (perhaps the Mail, I don’t recall) was claiming that ‘potentially’ 29 million Bulgarians and Romanians could ‘flood’ into the country. While that’s technically correct (their weasel word is ‘potentially’) — that 29 million is the entire population of both countries.

I for one welcome the new people who might come here. I’m sure there’ll be some undesirables amongst them just as there are amongst those of us who already live here but the greatest number of them will be ordinary folks who just want to get on with their lives.

Posted 28 December 2013, 20:29
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