is this a "wind up" ?????

Did any of the "OHNOES IMMIGRANTS TAKING OUR BENEFITZ!!!" crown trouble themselves to actually read the leaflet in question? In particular this bit:

"If you have never lived in the UK before, you will not normally have paid NI contributions. This will usually mean that you can’t get benefits, which are based on NI contributions. However, if you or your spouse or civil partner have paid the equivalent of NI contributions in another country, or in some cases have lived in another country, this can sometimes help you to qualify for benefits in Great Britain. This only applies to some benefits, and only to countries in the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland and countries that have a special agreement with the UK."

So that's most of the world not getting owt.

It's also worth noting that you can't really pillage the benefits system and take all the jobs at the same time. Not legally, anyway.

We do need some sort of control, we also need to force some of the Jeremy Kyle chavs back to work by cutting their benefits if they don't work, maybe the law's should positively discriminate towards UK applicants (after all a lot of countries do this, so why shouldn't we?).
One other observation, at work we have a coffee bar and they employ two polish girls and one English girl or did anyway, the last two English girls they have lost because they are driven to succeed (they are nicer to talk to and make a massive effort with their customer service) and have been promoted into other higher profile roles where the Polish girls are left behind. Anyway it's good to see the young girls do well and be a real example of how you can start at the bottom but with a little hard work and a good attitude quickly move up the ladder.

Carl.

2 things.
1. I have just given my fisher and 2 stretch lowriders to a latvian bloke who has his own car spraying bodyshop in the uk. I gave them to him because of the price he has quoted me. £60 a frame for paint and prep. yes I am aware cheap buys cheap but I have seen his work and as he regularly gets t2 resto,s and the odd 70,s porsche (which i have seen with my own eyes) so I have no qualms over the job being done. he even said he will do the fisher for free (clearcoat frame and forks and stem) as he doesnt want me thinking hes a wrongun because hes eastern european, (his words).
2. we have Ed Milliband paying us a visit on thursday to deliver a keynote speech on......yes the economy! anyone want a bit of cash for questions

Most sites I work on, I use agency labour. I work all over the country and quite sporadically at that , so taking someone else full time doesn't make sense. I would say I go through 3 or 4 agency labourers before I get a half decent one. The last job I worked on in Birmingham is a good example:

Day 1 - Two labourers booked, one turns up, gets inducted onto site, then disappears when I get something from the truck, never to be seen again.
Day 2 - Two more labourers booked, both turn up, one gets inducted, the other one has turned up with no hardhat (not the crime of the century but a good indicator he's a f*ckwit) but more importantly he doesn't have a CSCS card (which everyone has to have to work on site) and only has the test certificate, which has a 6 month limit on it, from february. It is December. F*ckwit goes home.
Day 3 - One more labourer booked, all good.

So I spent the best part of a day and a half dicking about before I can actually get any proper work done.

I can assure you this is the same story on the vast majority of sites I go to. The low end of the British workforce don't want to know about hard work for little money, even if it does mean they may well work their way through the ranks onto bigger and better things. The Polish get on with it.

I should also point out I had three really good labourers on that job, which was over Xmas and into the new year. They have all since found long term work, which surely is the point of an employment agency in the classical sense.

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2012/jan-2012/dwp005-12.shtml

So much bunkum on this issue. Even the Tories have taken the foot off the loud pedal on this one.

There are all sorts of stats showing immigrants are net contributors.

Can someone show me this leaflet, or any evidence it existed?

Have a read HF!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23614068/Bene ... ts-Booklet

This tripe is being hawked around all the right wing sites. It appeared in the last six months. That is supposedly a leaflet published in 2006! Are we now accepting the internet as conclusive proof of the existence of anything?

I don't think it's tripe, just the most unfortunately titled document the government may have ever produced!

This copy was uploaded in 2009, it's been all over facebook recently. As I say the title is any easy thing to jump on, do you think anyone has actually read it???

Most of these 'foreigners' claiming benefits are fellow citizens of the European Union. They have the same rights to work and claim benefits here as we do in their native countries.

i think I'm right in saying (although I have no evidence to hand) that the largest portion of our welfare bill goes to native Brits. The majority of whom it seems are feckless individuals with no interest in work, no interest in competing for jobs with their European neighbours, and why would they when they are housed for free and given hand outs to live on.

Very true. Stats can be made to do cartwheels; we should all take everything with a pinch of salt.