ianek70
02.06.06, 14:57
A lot of Poles have emigrated to the UK and Ireland recently, including a lot
of my friends, and good luck to them.
But.
The Polish media seem obsessed with how cool and funky it is in the West, and
that the streets are paved with jobs. Every time the UK minimum wage
increases by 5 pence, it's headline news on Radio Trójka.
The worst, though, is the Wyborcza.
In the K-ce edition, whenever they advertise a Celtic folk concert, they
never miss the chance to say that "Poland shares more with Scotland and
Ireland than the exciting job opportunities for our young people."
There was a lack of maths teachers in Scottish secondary schools, and they
didn't rule out recruiting teachers from abroad, so the GW immediately wrote
that "Poles could soon be teaching English in Scotland!"
The Scottish Police Officers Association (or whatever it's called, but it's
got nothing to do with recruitment to the regional police forces) announced
recently that it was setting up liaison offices in Eastern Europe, and those
wacky surrealists in the Polish media immediately announced "Poles could soon
be patrolling the streets of Scotish towns!" On the recruitment pages of the
Police Forces' own websites it still says you have to have been resident in
the UK for 3 years.
Equally absurd is the frequent claim that further education in Scotland is
for some bizarre reason free for Poles.
They seem obsessed with making people emigrate, but why?
It's at best a short-term solution to unemployment - in the early 70s the UK
government still subsidised poor people to bugger off to the Southern
Hemisphere (10 quid it cost), and mass unemployment only became a problem in
the late 70s. It's obvious that if 10% of the population of a town emigrates,
then 10% of the shops will shut, 10% of the chip shops and cinemas will
become unnecessary, and 10% fewer buses will be needed.
Emigration is a good thing for people in bad economic circumstances, but it
doesn't help the Polish economy, so why encourage it?
