Our Towns Are Becoming Like Foreign Countries.

[anotheoldgit]

/// http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264799/Our-towns-like-foreign-country-Locals-cope-immigrants-says-mother-TV-clash-academic.html ///

Who should we believe, someone that actually lives in Boston, and who has person experience of the problem, or some Cambridge University classics professor?

[emmie]

As much as i admire Mary Beard for her scholarly works, don't think she is living in the real world. Mrs Bull is in the front line so to speak, comes from Polish descendants herself, and i don't believe she is being offensive, racist, just stating the facts that the place can't cope with more people. If the doctors surgeries are full to bursting and they have to close their lists, then that isn't good. It's what many people have been saying all along, that it's not so much where people are coming from, is whether any of the services that are needed can cope.

[sp1814]

naomi24

When you say that 27 languages are spoken - how many are actually spoken in the school?

I would LOVE to be bilingual...to have two languages is just fantastic. However when you say languages don't you mean that the families of these children speak those languages, rather than the kids not knowing English?

By the way - here's something that rarely gets mentioned...when newspapers reports things like that, they include all the different Indian and African dialects, which technically are not 'languages'.

Now that I think of it, I reckon we must've had kids who spoke about 15 different languages at school. Fortunately as we all know - kids absorb new language skills far quicker than adults...so if a child has poor written/spoken English skills in primary school, they pretty much would've caught up by middle school.

[mrsmaveric]

wait until the next wave of immigrants flood the country..the romanians...we are at breaking point now..david cameron ought to close the borders we have enough migrants here,whether they contribute to the system or not...enough is enough...

[Mosaic]

Em - maybe you are right, or maybe Mary B really is in the real world and really wants to keep her academic post.....

[jno]

on the contrary, naomi, he needed a lot of encouragement, and got it. So did they all.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// Also with regards to their uninsured cars - perhaps if the police weren't so busy every weekend in town centres up and down the country trying to manage drunk and drugged up 20-something's getting into fights, passing out with their skirts hitched up around their waists and and defecating on our high streets like animals, they would have more time to do real police work. ///

Or using their sparse resources being forced to form certain 'Operation' groups, to combat the high percentage of inner city shootings, knife crime, drugs, gang culture, Asian child grooming gangs, Eastern European sex slave gangs etc, etc.

[naomi24]

jno, Wonderful! What a pity that many of the other multi-cultural schools don't cope so admirably.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// Oh and as for the seasonal workers, you have to ask yourself...what would happen if the Poles and other Eastern European workers suddenly stopped coming over to do the menial work that we won't do? ///

As already said "did these crops rot in the fields before we had the immigrants to harvest them"?

/// What would happen to inflation (native Britons would demand higher wages for the jobs the immigrants do perfectly well). ///

All in favour of cheap labour are we sp?

You sound like a deep south plantation boss, wasn't they all for slave labour at little cost, so that they could make their fortunes.

[anotheoldgit]

boxtops

/// we get a lot of travellers in this county too - they make very little pressure on health or education, as they move on all the
time. ///

And does that mean that they no longer have to seek medical attention at times, or send their children to school, in the areas they choose to move to?

[tonyav]

If the cops did have a crack down on the uninsured drivers of Sparkhill, Sparkbrook and Small heath etc, Then I would bet that the words of victimization and racism would start being used and then the rioting starts again.

[emmie]

a friend is a head teacher at a school where they have now have a high proportion of Polish children, she has said in the past that it's difficult, because they don't speak English, or very little when starting, and that they have to accommodate them no matter the problems. Which means the British children are to some extent being held back, you can't simply have classes for the Polish children, no one is going to accept that, so it's mixed. and they they may pick the language up quickly, however that means each new intake has to do a catch up, and this has been going on for a long while now. add in the translators they have had to employ.

[Kromovaracun]

The Mail distorts things yet again.

Beard was not speaking about her own community - she was responding to a question about whether public services could cope, and cited a report from Boston City Council, which she said convinced her that services were able to cope - she also provided evidence from the report which she found particularly strong. Said audience member questioned her, and she responded with evidence from the Council's report.

It was a perfectly mature and respectful exchange of views. Beard was not dismissive or rude to Bull.

According to the Mail, however, Beard launched a loony liberal tirade and was daringly confronted and left speechless by a local mum:
"Professor Mary Beard dismissed stories about the number of migrant workers overwhelming Boston as ‘myths’ and said ‘public services can cope’."

[jno]

claims that cars were being racially profiled would be quite hard to sustain, I would have thought.

[boxtops]

Let's choose where they'd start - Skoda, VW....

[anotheoldgit]

It is amazing that Professor Mary Beard, had foreknowledge of a report from Boston City Council, when the viewers of Question Time are assured by David Dimbleby almost weekly, that the panel do not know what questions are to be asked.

[emmie]

i have given up watching question time, loads of hot air, very rarely an interesting debate, more a shouting match between people who should know better

[jno]

boxtops, I was thinking more of British cars they wouldn't stop - Reliant Robins... errr...

[Kromovaracun]

"It is amazing that Professor Mary Beard, had foreknowledge of a report from Boston City Council,"

I disagree - if you look at the panelists, they invariably have notes and papers with them. This doesn't mean they're told the questions beforehand, necessarily, it just means they can guess what kind of questions might come up (and Beard has been on QT numerous times before).

[EDDIE51]

That really is a bit rich ! The woman is from an immigrant family herself ''her grandparents are Polish but moved to England'' now she is moaning because others are doing the same.
That area of the UK does have very many immigrant workers who get seasonal work on the farms. They are desperately needed as without them there would be no food harvested , no British workers will touch the jobs they do. British workers just will not start work outdoors in all weathers at daybreak and work till dark for the minimum wage £6.20 an hour.

[anotheoldgit]

Kromovaracun

Yes perhaps she would have foreseen a question on immigration.

But don't you find it most strange, that she would know that there would be a member of the audience from Boston, who was going to ask a question about the particular problem with immigrants in Boston, so much so that she would be in possession of the appropriate report from Boston City Council?

I only saw a glass of water in front of her, not a crystal globe.