to feel that after living here for twenty years that i am no longer really welcome

[xmasadsboohiss]

I am from another European country and have lived here virtually all my adult life. I have worked for all of that time apart from a couple of months on the dole and on maternity leave. I will never consider myself British although I broadly share the values of the majority of people in this country. Over the last few months as Nigel Farage has been getting more and more air time I am feeling increasingly alienated and almost unwelcome - presumably Mr Farage's solution would be that I should pack my bags and go. If only life in the real world were quite so straightforward.

I've only skimmed a few posts but I'm sad that a few bigoted fools are alienating residents.

Why is ukip more popular with men than women?
well, one reason might be because various UKIP people (Godfrey Bloom in particular) also come out with unacceptable sexist shite.

At this point I'm quite disillusioned with all the political parties, but the one I am absolutely sure I will never vote for is UKIP (I don't even count BNP as a proper party, obv)

xmas you can have my spot, I certainly won't be coming back!

My dp is Swedish but speaks perfect English, many English people who know both of US well speak reeeaaaallllyyyyy slowly when they talk to him.

We speak Swedish ( mostly to improve my Swedish) together and the way we are treated in parks or in shops when people have heard US speaking a foreign language is very different to how I am treated when I just speak English.

It makes me so angry that the UK which is made up of immigrants and sent immigrants to far flung places to take over land from local people can be so rude about people from other countries. I know it isn't everyone butits enough to be noticeable.

My Jamaican born dad recently post an anti eastern European rant on Facebook. I am stunned at how narrow minded and stupid.

He managed to completely forget that he was parroting out the exact same bullshit the national front were were saying to him and my grandparents in the 70s.

I wish we could be honest and sensible when we talk about immigration and play into peoples emotions and fears.

My Jamaican born dad recently post an anti eastern European rant on Facebook. I am stunned at how narrow minded and stupid.

He managed to completely forget that he was parroting out the exact same bullshit the national front were were saying to him and my grandparents in the 70s.

I wish we could be honest and sensible when we talk about immigration and play into peoples emotions and fears.

PosyFossilsShoes

I certainly wasn't disagreeing with you in any major way and I agree with you about:-

the theory is fine - you work / study / are self sufficient or you leave. We have free movement of workers not of people.

However, if you talk to people in low paid jobs, there is a lot more competition for these jobs now and free movement of workers within the EU increases that competition and keeps a cap on wages. Great for employers, not so great for families with low incomes.
.

Although I accept that it will never happen, I wonder what the UK would look like if we introduced Australian style immigration control to EU workers?

Imagination boggles! We would need to withdraw from the EU first and then apply work permits to close neighbours like Ireland and France. I suspect that any attempt to do it would end in financial ruin and bureaucratic nightmare.

I find it amusing (although it's not really) that the people I've had the misfortune to know who support UKIP and their immigration policies are perfect guests for the Jeremy Kyle show.

Spouting all this nonsense about immigrants receiving benefits and getting social housing when they themselves are long term benefit claimants and have done nothing to financially support their multiple children.

I know this because these people are members of my family.

They are too stupid and ignorant to realise the hypocrisy.

My Jamaican born dad recently post an anti eastern European rant on Facebook. I am stunned at how narrow minded and stupid.

TheXX my elderly Jamaican friends keep collaring me in the Post Office/ Grocers/ Bus Stop to rant about how this country has gone to the dogs since the 50s and 60s . I've just started accepting that perhaps SERIOUS intolerance of change is a risk of old age and try not to hold it against anyone. It startled me too though.

UKIP have 0 seats in the UK parliament, Greens have 1, Plaid Cymru have 3.

I look forward to the UK media giving 100% more coverage to the Green Party than they do to UKIP.

No OP YANBU - they have hijacked media share of voice and that is worrying. I hope it's not reflected in voting next year.

Pants, do immigrants not get benefits then? And social housing? Are they excluded? did not know that (if that is true?)

ikea, speaking slowly is not rude, they just assume you are foreign and try to be helpful.

I have never found it insulting.

Yes agree the man is a total twunt, however, please don't dismiss him as harmless. He does the jolly,"just an ordinary beer drinking bloke schtick" and gets more and more media attention. If just a few people start thinking they are sensible and reasonable then it's a slippery slope. People, ordinary, normal people need to be vocal in their contempt for UKIP and our politicians need to be saying the same and coming up with sensible,workable alternatives, so we can vote for them with confidence and ensure that the other side of fuck will be their only constituency.
And yes, to the poster, guardian reader and proud of it.
Wonder where the posters are from the earlier thread saying UKIP are now the only alternative?

Quint, that sounds like such a shame, and difficult for you.

I felt like you did when I lived in London. I find London a quite unfriendly place to live really.

I moved to a village in the home counties, all WI and cake sales and local community shit 'n stuff

and the foreigners in this village are treated like a bit of a novelty, people say they like my comments on British Life (I love it but some things puzzle me, like the need for 1001 committees, the love of Kate Middleton, the "no thank you, I couldn't possibly, oh no, really. Oh, go on then just a little bit" ), maybe they are just being polite. I like to mock them, and they mock me!

Seriously, London vs a village in the country, it's like 2 different worlds.

Leave London!

OP you are most certainly welcome here and I would certainly call you British is that's what you want to be.

Farage is a nasty narrow-minded little man, and all the more dangerous because he has a gift for public speaking. If anyone should be expelled from the country it is him.

Please stay here, call yourself British, and help to fight UKIP by voting for anyone else.

do you think OP can vote?

I can't, despite having lived here for 18 yrs and being married to a Brit!

Farage is a MotherFucker! Every single person in this country that is classed as British will have another nationality in family tree from somewhere. I'm half Irish, my DH has Jewish and German in his family, DSD has Scottish and Irish. I'm also pretty sure that my maternal grandmother had some Caribbean in her bloodline. Which would mean it would be distantly in my bloodline.

No-one in this country is pure British (whatever that is). This country thrives on immigration. I glad that I live in a country that so many people from other countries want to live in. In the area I live in there are, a Jamaican family, an Asian family, several Polish families, several Czech families, quite a few Polish students and loads of British families. I love the fact that everyone lives along side each other quite happily.

Please don't listen to that poor excuse for a politician. Hell would freeze over before I voted UKIP!

20 years here, I cant vote. Dh can, he is Polish, and Poland is EU. I am Schengen and EEA. No vote for me.

What Mojito said..!

Quint, see, that is something people don't know!

Anyway, come and live my village, please.

Well if you had a nice "British" name like, let's say, Farage then I can't see why you'd have a problem.

Honestly, doesn't he see the irony in all this shit he spouts?

You're welcome here OP, don't ever believe what that man says.

Ikea, speaking slowly is not rude, they just assume you are foreign and try to be helpful.

These are people who know my dp well and have had many conversations with him.

If he spoke English to you you would possibly assume he was an American who had been living in the UK for awhile but you wouldn't think his mother tongue wasn't English.

I think I would love village life.
Dh wouldnt. Born in a big Capital, wont leave London.

I am also from another Western European country and have lived in the UK for 22 years now. I am not British and will never be, but after 22 years, I am also a foreigner in my own home country. I like the UK, I like English people, my DH is English and my two DC consider themselves English, but like other people have mentioned, I do not have a single English friend, and this is most certainly not by choice. When I lived in London I was aware of it but it didn't bother me because I had a network of foreign friends. Two years ago I moved with my family to East Sussex and now I am truly alone.

This weekend, my Spanish parents and I were followed onto a bus but two arseholes who chanted "arriba, arriba!" and "meet my little friend" (no idea if that's a pop reference or they were just being dirty) to us. This being London where you can get the shit beaten out of you on a bus, I ignored them no matter how much it burned. I bet they will vote UKIP.

And despite its "multiculturalism", the next generation is not any better. Ds1 (who is in Y7) has been upset by an English fellow pupil calling him "scandinavian nigger"- wtf.... Despite the schools T&C stating that racial abuse is ground for expelling, nothing happened to the boy who shouted racial abuse at a Pakistani child, in front of a teacher. "because he did not really mean it, and is friends with the child in question". And so it continues.