No Borders Group

Not entirely sure I agree. We are densely populated but nowhere near the levels where it is unsustainable. I have few problems with immigration. I have a problem with those immigrants who sap off the welfare state and the fact that asylum seekers can't work even if they wanted to but that's due to my gripes with social security and not with the fact that these people are immigrants, the natives can be just as bad. People moan about the terrible pressures on services but when I had my aneurysm I was treated in one of the best neurological hospitals in Europe ... on the NHS and they found me a bed immediately (which was handy because it meant I didn't die). I got a council flat (which is being demolished and I get a brand spanking lovely housing association flat to replace it) within 8 months of going on the housing register and they even gave me 260 quid to decorate it. I am actually doing really quite well at the moment thanks to the strong economy so I could afford to opt out of State education if I had children. The benefits of the current wave of immigration aren't just economic. The street cleaning contract companies in my area are staffed almost entirely by Eastern Europeans and they do an excellent job that many natives would turn their noses up at. The re-energising of the service and catering industries benefits everyone who uses them. Where I work in a big old mansion house we got a Polish company to deep clean the place and a nice young Slovenian to paint it for what I consider to be a fair price. However , I think immigration does need to be managed and the implications thought through a bit better. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

It's the Australians I'm worried about, what are they all doing now the Polish have all the bar jobs.

for a good long years, the Aussies have been working in temporary administrative, IT, telemarketing and other office based jobs where the pay and hours are better than bar-work. In fact before the current wave of immigration from Eastern Europe, the catering industry was struggling to fill posts because the Aussies weren't going for this type of work.

"However , I think immigration does need to be managed and the implications thought through a bit better." Immigration is managed at the moment. I think there a questions about how its managed and the way that's represented to the public. New Labour's spent the last ten years expounding anti-immigrant rhetoric, while overseeing huge levels of economic immigration - particularly from new entrants into the EU. Over 600,000 people have come in from new EU countries since 2004. This was a political decision by the UK government. France, Germany and most other EU countries chose to restrict the numbers of immigrants from accession countries. Like Jude (and for many of the same reasons) I actually support this policy but I think it's pretty ridiculous for Gordon Brown to be spouting on about 'British jobs for British people' in that context. If politicians support immigration on an economic and practical level, they should have the guts to make the case for it.

We took the Poles - because they are traditionally good workers and don't cause trouble - but we have blocked off the Romanians and Hungarians (because they do cause trouble and have a history of organised crime). Huge generalisations but that's what the government think. We needed people to do the s**t jobs and we got them. Some of them will settle, and move up the social ladder. Then we'll need another lot. In between we let a few in at a time and try to manage them. It's harsh, ridiculous and slightly scary - but that's how it happens.

Yes, sorry, I should have said it should be 'better managed'. I agree with you Camilla in that prisoners should be made to do compulsary 40 hours per week labour and that the minimum wage shouldn't be applied to them as it currently is. However there is a limit to what jobs they can fill - they can't do anything off-site as I don't think I'd like to be served in a bar by a chain-gang from HMP Strangeways. I do feel sorry for students who have a hard time finding part time jobs (this was a lifeline for me) but students can't do all the required hours. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

None of this has got anything to do with immigration. Most people who end up in prison are there at least partly because they're either unwilling or unable to do anything economically useful. Forcing them to do stuff - even if you don't pay them at all - is much more expensive than paying an immigrant who is fit and willing to do the job. Getting prisoners to do useful for work is good for prisoners and good for society but it's not an efficient way of getting things done. It terms of the economic role fulfilled by 600,000 immigrants, it's not even close to being 10% of an alternative. "The original post was sparked off by a Slovak woman in Chatham bashing a 10 year old round the head with a pipe." This is also nothing to do with immigration. It's an anecdote about one unpleasant incident. British people hit kids, too. Are you really suggesting that Slovakian people are culturally prone to random acts of violence?

"Their attitude to children is not the same as ours.I came into contact with these attitudes over many years.Think 1950s and you sort of have it as in it is ok to hit kids for discipline.It is ok for kids to latch key quite young." I still don't really understand what this has to do with immigration and nationality. What you're saying is actually 'their attitude is not the same as mine'. Lots of British people believe it's ok to discipline children through physical force.

'"The original post was sparked off by a Slovak woman in Chatham bashing a 10 year old round the head with a pipe." This is also nothing to do with immigration. It's an anecdote about one unpleasant incident.' Bukh, the extent of your ignorance astounds me. Are you seriously asserting you have never even heard of Slovakian Pipe Bashing and its rich cultural heritage? Why, back in their native land the Slovaks do little else! Lamping kids round the noggin with bits of piping left, right and centre! There's a reason why their national sanitation infrastructure's in such chronic disrepair - Slovakian mafiosos pick it apart then sell it on to bash-happy mothers! I kid you not - paint a cardboard loo-roll tube grey, and you'll not be off the plane five minutes before someone offers you fifty quid for it. Then you'll probably receive a sharp blow to the rear of the skull with a blunt, cylindrical instrument and have the cash taken back. But still.

I've been to the Czech Republic and didn't see any pipe bashing going on. Maybe that was the cause of the split. "The upshot was that having identified the groups who do badly and add to an underclass we either decide to limit immigrants from those places or realize that money will have to be spent (a lot of money) to provide for them." Didn't see the programme about this. Joking aside, I'd be extremely surprised if one of those places was Slovakia. "Did you see the one later about Sharia?" I saw the last 20 minutes of that. Interesting stuff. It didn't convert me to the idea of Sharia law as an alternative to the imperfect but functional legal system we have here. In a multi-cultural society the idea of people choosing which legal system to be governed by according to the religion is incompatible with the idea of everyone being equal before the law. Having said that, though, it's not necessarily a bad thing in Nigeria when compared to the alternatives. "You didn't answer my point about asset stripping.Isnt it wrong to cheerfully take skilled people from their countries? Poland is missing its energetic young.Other countries miss their nurses.Perhaps we need to pay enough to staff our own hospitals." Asset stripping is wrong but that's not our current relationship to Poland. It wouldn't help Poland to force young workers to remain in Poland, unemployed. Some of the cash that immigrants earn is sent home and that helps to drive local economies which (to some extent) helps to reduce the number of people who feel forced to leave. The situation with nurses etc. is slightly different in that I agree it isn't desirable for poor countries to spend money training medical professionals, only for those people to then go and work in the West. I agree we should pay staff here more (and the present government has increased doctors and nurses pay by loads) but I don't think it would be possible to pay nurses so much that the jobs would be so attractive that all of them would be filled by British people, while also spending enough cash on drugs, hospitals etc.

You're not getting any closer to convincing me that narrow anecdotal experience is directly relevant to public policy. I'm not convinced that there's anything in the educational or cultural make-up of Slovakians that makes them inherently worse au pairs than Czechs or Poles. But either way that's got nothing to do with immigration policy. The vast majority of the immigrants from accession countries are not au pairs. Pakistani and Somali immigrants have done badly for quite a while. Pakistani immigrants are particularly likely to be very poor (even when compared to other immigrant communities), Somali immigrants are also likely to be poor, too but also likely to be fleeing violence and general chaos in their homeland and are also (from what I remember) disproportionately likely to have arrived here as children on their own. They're both groups with massive problems but neither of their experiences tells us much about what to do about immigration from Eastern Europe.