Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

A few years ago, just before Bulgarians became eligible to move to the UK to work if they wanted to, I was speaking to a very pleasant twenty-something Bulgarian woman whilst holidaying over there.

She was articulate, obviously very intelligent and barely put a foot wrong in her English. She told us that, like most Bulgarians of her generation, she'd learned English at school. Rising property prices in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, meant that although her parents' generation had been able to move in from the countryside for work, and buy affordable homes, her generation couldn't. They were stuck in shared rented places of very low quality.

She'd worked the numbers; about a couple of years of hard work and frugal living in the UK and she'd have enough to buy a house in Bulgaria. She wasn't going to slip into this country as an illegal worker, she was going to wait until it was legal, which was about a year or so after our conversation. She may be here now, she may have been and gone, and have bought her Bulgarian home outright. She may have changed her mind and stayed in her own country.

I wish her well. I don't blame her for making an entirely rational decision which was in her best interests. But a labour market which is awash with people like her is one which is toxic to the indigenous population who are running homes and families, not dossing in a hotbed rented room and saving like stink for a clearly-defined and worthwhile goal.

The elites and the business class love what's happening, it's so very very good for them. I'm furious that the so-called Labour Party and the trades unions aren't 100% behind the Leave campaign.

milasavesmoney

Thinking of you all at this crossroad you face.

nuatha

maryb wrote: »

Someone who comes here to work for a few years - and work hard, there's no denying- is basically exploiting the difference between currencies' purchasing power. Selling their labour at a high price and repatriating it to buy goods and services at a low price. And you can't blame them.

And there's no real difference between travelling half way across Europe (or round the world) and the length of the country.

I used to know quite a few people who got the Sunday overnight bus from Newcastle to London, worked on building sites till the got a bus home on Friday afternoon.
A mate used to get a train from Durham to London, have two or three nights of the week in a very good London hotel (he'd generally have a night or two at home each week) which meant his with and kids had 14 acres complete with pool and ponies while his colleagues struggled to buy apartments in London.

I've now been trying to get an appointment with my GP for 6 months, without success. (Nothing important, I need the results from two different consultants, my meds updated and a decision needs to be made on what the best route for my future healthcare is likely to be - as time passes those options are shrinking rapidly.
However I can't blame migrants - there are some in the county, but there's less than 50000 in the whole region according to government figures and its rare to hear a foreign accent let alone a language in the town I live in.
Many of the Poles in the area have been here since the '20s with others staying on after WWII. There's a substantial number of Filipinos, the hospitals are staffed with them, the Asian and Chinese communities are long standing. Few Eastern Europeans venture in this direction.

Yet services are stretched to beyond breaking point - because successive governments aren't investing in infrastructure or spending money sensibly on the needs of the current population, let alone planning for the future. Its easy to blame migrants (they're the latest in a string of scapegoats governments have tethered to distract the population) but whether Friday sees a Remain or Leave victory the problems will continue to deteriorate (and the next scapegoat will be whichever side wins the referendum).

moneyistooshorttomention

Karmacat wrote: »

It's not about ideals, though, it's about reality.

A young cousin of mine got 4 x A* at uni, and wants to be a doctor. The number of university places allowed for training doctors is limited centrally, so I now believe, and as a result she was offered a delayed place, she had to wait a year before she could start to train. The number of UK doctors is therefore held artificially low.

I didnt know that:eek:.

That's ridiculous. We should be doing everything we can to train up everyone that is willing and able enough to do a job like that - and my heart sinks at just how many doctors are around retirement age (ie so we need their replacements lined-up trained and "raring to go", as well as needing extra doctors in the first place).

maryb

I am old enough to remember the great slew of social legislation that laid the foundation for many of the rights we now take for granted - legalisation of !!!!!exuality, the Abortion Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act. We didn't need Europe to tell us what to do.

I don't know why the unions support Remain. But for Labour to admit they sold their soul (and their supporters into serfdom) in order to seem business friendly and electable would be hard. Frank Field gets it and a few others

maryb

:huh::huh:What's with the filter?

maryb

More reminiscing.... Were you up for Portillo? Became the defining phrase of the 1997 election. We all knew that we had taken action against an administration that had become arrogant decadent and corrupt. And we could do it.

We can't do anything to prise the fingers of the EU elite off the controls. And I think we would soon get to the stage where general elections would have as much real significance as re-enactments of folk traditions

GreyQueen

maryb wrote: »

:huh::huh:What's with the filter?

It's a very idiosyncratic filter, isn't it? I'd love to know why MSE thinks m a f i a is a swear word and why it doesn't also recognise mafiosi.

My GP practice is a large group practice, each doctor's post is filled, each consulting room utilised and they are making good use of the two nurse practitioners.

Yet, in the past 3-4 four years, the time it takes to get an appointment has stretched from a few days, to a week, week and a half, two weeks, three, four. The increase in time would be a smooth upward line, if you graphed it. Strangely this increase is running in exact parallel to the amount of EU migrants who are here. The GP practices in my hometown had to close to new patient registrations when a sudden surge of EU migration overwhelmed their ability to cope; town's population had increased by 20%. Here, if you can't arrange to be ill with many weeks' notice, you end up at the walk-in centre or A & E in a crisis.

There are also restrictions on the number of training places for nurses in the UK. TPTB have obviously made a very cynical decision that it is cheaper to let other countries, preferably poorer countries, train nurses and then poach them. Never mind the detriment this causes to those countries' budgets and healthcare systems, or that the indigenous population are being denied opportunities to train for a worthwhile career. Barstewards.

nuatha, I hear what you're saying. I know people with Polish surnames inherited from their grandads here from WW2, people with Ukrainian surnames inherited from great-grandads who were here after WW1, people with Italian surnames inherited from grands and great grands who have been here since the 1920s. None of them can speak a word of their ancestor's mother tongue and they're not the problem.

The problem is, we have one of the lowest levels of doctors per head of population in the western world. The problem is that we still have many schools who are accomodating pupils in temporary classrooms. One of the temporary classrooms I used in the 1970s is still there and still being used. It was an appalling building then and it hasn't aged gracefully.

I myself went through primary and secondary education in a population bulge which meant there were 40-45 kids in one class. Work it out; 35 minute lesson, 40-45 kids, classroom so overfull that the teacher cannot even physically move between the desks. It wasn't good then and it isn't good now, and education will be suffering. If I had a kid going through the same, I'd be furious.

Of course, the ruling caste and anyone of wealth buys their children's way into fee-paying schools and doesn't give a t0ss about the rest of us. And you can bet your last penny that they won't be hanging on their telephones trying to get through to their doctor for hour after hour, after hour.

We need to have fewer economic migrants because the present situation is going to destabilise society. And, we won't be able to offer asylum to refugees if the country is overfull and those poor people will be tarred with the same brush as others who just fancy skipping over from the continent for higher wages or a change in scenery.

maryb

the middle class's turn is coming. They are cash cows to be milked at the moment. Who do you think funded the tax credits paid to BHS workers which nearly equal led the dividends paid out to Monaco?

They will end up deeper in debt slavery than ever

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

My GP practice is a large group practice, each doctor's post is filled, each consulting room utilised and they are making good use of the two nurse practitioners.

Yet, in the past 3-4 four years, the time it takes to get an appointment has stretched from a few days, to a week, week and a half, two weeks, three, four. The increase in time would be a smooth upward line, if you graphed it. Strangely this increase is running in exact parallel to the amount of EU migrants who are here. The GP practices in my hometown had to close to new patient registrations when a sudden surge of EU migration overwhelmed their ability to cope; town's population had increased by 20%. Here, if you can't arrange to be ill with many weeks' notice, you end up at the walk-in centre or A & E in a crisis.

The strange thing is, I can say exactly the same about the practice I belong to. (Unlike several in the county that no longer have any GPs, they are either staffed part time by other practises or in two cases run purely on a locum basis.

There are also restrictions on the number of training places for nurses in the UK. TPTB have obviously made a very cynical decision that it is cheaper to let other countries, preferably poorer countries, train nurses and then poach them. Never mind the detriment this causes to those countries' budgets and healthcare systems, or that the indigenous population are being denied opportunities to train for a worthwhile career. Barstewards.

And they are about to make training to be a nurse even less rewarding, despite the fact that student nurses are actually part of the staffing arrangements of hospitals, they will no longer be paid (receive a bursary) but will now incur the same debt as any other degree.
Its far cheaper to import nurses from the Philippines, paying a 10K bounty to recruiters than it is to train indigenous nurses.

nuatha, I hear what you're saying. I know people with Polish surnames inherited from their grandads here from WW2, people with Ukrainian surnames inherited from great-grandads who were here after WW1, people with Italian surnames inherited from grands and great grands who have been here since the 1920s. None of them can speak a word of their ancestor's mother tongue and they're not the problem.

Some of the Poles retain Polish accents (though blended with Pitmatic and Geordie) and many still speak their Great-grandparent's mother tongue. That may be a peculiarity of the North East.

The problem is, we have one of the lowest levels of doctors per head of population in the western world. The problem is that we still have many schools who are accomodating pupils in temporary classrooms. One of the temporary classrooms I used in the 1970s is still there and still being used. It was an appalling building then and it hasn't aged gracefully.

I myself went through primary and secondary education in a population bulge which meant there were 40-45 kids in one class. Work it out; 35 minute lesson, 40-45 kids, classroom so overfull that the teacher cannot even physically move between the desks. It wasn't good then and it isn't good now, and education will be suffering. If I had a kid going through the same, I'd be furious.

Likewise.
Though the middle school I attended (held up by Acro-props) has since been demolished and replaced, the Portacabin classrooms are still used. My high school still has a number of temporary classrooms, though it looks to have less than it did 40-50 years ago.
But that isn't a migration issue (though I agree that migration does put additional pressure on an already stretched and broken issue) its a sign that government is failing to honour its contract with the people. The people pay taxes and get services in return - bailing out the banking industry was hardly an investment in this country's future.

Of course, the ruling caste and anyone of wealth buys their children's way into fee-paying schools and doesn't give a t0ss about the rest of us. And you can bet your last penny that they won't be hanging on their telephones trying to get through to their doctor for hour after hour, after hour.

We need to have fewer economic migrants because the present situation is going to destabilise society. And, we won't be able to offer asylum to refugees if the country is overfull and those poor people will be tarred with the same brush as others who just fancy skipping over from the continent for higher wages or a change in scenery.

We see the referendum very differently, I see it as a the right wing having a power struggle over its future direction and leadership, whilst finding another set of issues to scapegoat and divide the population over. Whichever side wins I expect that the general population of this country are going to get shafted (and that we winning side will become the next set of scapegoats) and the political and business elites will continue laughing all the way to their tax havens.