To think Ukrainian families may just have to..

[FindingMyself1999]

Go back? bbc article

such a sad situation but we barely have enough housing or school places as it is. Unless the hosts can act as guarantors? That’s a possibility ?

the government really hasn’t thought through the aftermath of the hosting scheme.

I think large swathes of British people have probably had enough of being asked to wear a hair shirt from what was supposed to have been done before they were born.

No country-and that includes India, Africa and most European countries-ghas shit that doesn't stink but it seems to be the British who are supposed to be instantly silenced the moment they complain because of the past.

Quite frankly. whoever thought that up is a PR genius because it is used as a great big shitty stick to beat anyone from the UK who says the British should come first in their own country!

I'm not even British but I do feel sorry for the poor buggers forced to take shite, wear hairshirts and yell Mea Culpa for ever more because of past 'sins'.

It really is about time it stopped. I won't be apologising for anything any fucker did unless it was me, my children under 18 or a pet. Bollocks to that back and front!

It’s a controversial opinion but I agree with you. This country is a mess and we should only be accepting unlimited migrants (not all of them are refugees) if we are in a strong position.

@oakleaffy yes, I’m an indigenous New Zealander.

👏🏼 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

At what point do numerous horrible experiences qualify as “generally”. There must be a point, surely.

We are hosting a young couple with a baby. The dad is a software developer and has landed a good WFM job that pays £55k and only takes a few hours of work each day; this is more than my DP and I earn together. They could afford to move out and rent a property (we are in a low-cost area) but they prefer to send money to their families.

Newsflash- Africa is not a country. It’s a continent 3times the size of the Europe.

Yes, you’re culpable if you hold on to I’ll-gotten gains when there are plenty of opportunity to return them to their rightful owners.

Thank you SO much for posting this. You've said everything I was thinking, only you said it coherently.

It really is about time it stopped. I won't be apologising for anything any fucker did unless it was me, my children under 18 or a pet. Bollocks to that back and front!

Nobody on this thread has asked you to. It’s not about apologies. But history helps us understand the problems of the present, and in the UKs case, how they have contributed to it. Your attitude reeks of ignorance and lack of critical thinking. The attitude on this thread that Britain has to do so much for the world and is always helping others, why can’t they focus on themselves etc etc is why we then had comments referring to British history. You’ve made a mess in the world. You haven’t just gone round helping. Quite the opposite. Blair took you into a war not that long ago remember. The British empire helped itself all over the world and you all benefit from that today. Your people are everywhere and you don’t think you should help people now? If you think you should just ‘take care of our own’, fine. But get the fuck out of all the countries you colonised first, and give the land back!

Do they pay their bills? If so then , they’re paying their way?

Otherwise, why would you tolerate this?! It’s not their fault, I’m afraid.

There has always been a degree of hostility and resentment to people who are foreign or different, especually refugees.

Sometimes politicians claim that Britain has a proud history of welcoming those in need. This is not true.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/british-newspapers-applaud-rejection-of-call-for-admission-of-refugees

Yes, you’re culpable if you hold on to I’ll-gotten gains when there are plenty of opportunity to return them to their rightful owners.

^^^

Yes, the whole CONTINENT of Africa has some very dodgy moments in their past. Thank you for correcting that.

Bollocks to the rest of your starry eyed remarks.

Mine stayed exactly six weeks. She lost everything in Ukraine. Within a month she had scored a well paid job and we found somewhere for her to stay where the job was. After six months she has saved a deposit and is currently applying for a mortgage to buy a flat. It's been a wonderful, life enhancing experience which we intend to repeat.

Damn right! Countries and people are still suffering today because of what was done to them in the past - carving up land, theft of land, disease, genocide, asset stripping, destruction of indigenous history and culture.

Well said @WahineToa

For that to have happened as you say there would have to have been four children in the Ukrainian family all applying for the same year group , as places on waiting lists are organised by year group, not by total school population. And being second on the waiting list means just that, second on a list, you don’t have a school place, you have a position on a list which can change according to the admission priorities of the school.

Thank you for shedding light on this.

Your points are made so intelligently. They’re such a pleasure to read.

Will we be taking back the skills we passed on to or is it, as I suspect you think, a one way street.

Anyway, the point is the UK-and I'm not British-don't owe the whole world anything because of some past events when all the world has shitty shit on the record, including indigenous peoples.

They're not some sort of angels dropped onto earth you know! Do you really think they lived in some sort of prelapsarian society until The Empire came along. Jackanory! Get real.

Anyway, humouring you for the moment. If The Evil Empire is responsible for all the world's ills, then it's time what remains of it took its nose out of other people's business and stopped paying for their wars and expecting its citizens to host the world.

Yes this has been a real problem in my area too. A common situation in my town has been that the middle class refugees (accountants, lawyers, music teachers etc) hoped to find professional jobs here, but their English is near non-existent and they have no chance at such jobs which require expensive commutes and fluent English. For the first few months such refugees were in denial about their new job options, trying to approach this more as a professional on an overseas gap year and less as a refugee who has lost everything. They tried so hard to learn English superfast, but no one can go from zero to fluent in a foreign language in a few months.

Following denial came depression. Depression is not very condusive to job hunting or navigwting incomprehensible government websites. Now they are in panic mode as their kids have adapted to life and school in UK and are terrified of going back to Ukraine. The mothers are terrified of telling their kids they have to abandon their new friends and go back to a war zone of rubble. It’s a very cruel situation on the kids, might have been kinder to have been offered nothing than be given 6 months of a new life that then gets taken away.

Meanwhile the more working class refugees have been willing to take the cleaning and supermarket delivery jobs - the care sector in particular is desperate for new employees. But those jobs don’t pay enough for refugees to become self-sufficent and rent accommodation. The reality of life in 21st century Britain seems to be that a minimum wage worker cannot pay for a place to live alone. To make it worse, the government scheme required refugees to be housed by people in big houses with spare rooms - ie wealthy people in wealthy areas, and to find cheap accommodation the refugees would need to start again in dirt cheap areas and neither they nor their sponsors have any idea how to make that happen.

The whole thing is so bloody sad.

What a cock up. A Labour-organised scheme would have been less naive perhaps but we are where we are.

One standard for tbe blonde haired blue eyed Ukrainian refugees, another for the brown skinned Moslem refugees from countries whose states makes Ukraine look positively benign.

‘But oh Turkey can’t take them all’

Will we be taking back the skills we passed on to or is it, as I suspect you think, a one way street.

Which ones? What about the ones we passed on to you? Or do you think all those countries had was the land they took? No skills or knowledge? Just dumb natives as we were called? In NZ the British and Irish were met with resistance and superior fighting, so they created a treaty. They have never honoured it.

What were these skills?

We are hosting a group of three. We always intended to host to April 2023 (which will be a full year rather than just six months) but I don't know what will happen after that. The government payment expires then - it's £350 a month for all 3 so not a huge amount for 3 rooms and extra utility bills, food etc. etc. but we can manage though I'm worried as we go into winter and the bills shoot up.

We will definitely NOT become guarantors. We did it a some years ago for a friend and five years down the line suddenly got a demand for £2500 - he's no longer a friend especially as his attitude aws it was up to us to pay. He then failed to pay on an ongoing basis. Never again unless for my own children. I've actually seen Ukrainians on social media desperately asking for complete strangers to become their guarantors!

I honestly don't know how we'll cope if there is no where for them to go.. the government / local councils are certainly not offering much support in that regard. I dont think we'll be able to make them homeless - it's a big worry.

Our guests are from the North West of Ukraine which some people regard as "safe". More than one person has said to them they shouldn't have left because there was no problem in their part of Ukraine. Don't ask Ukrainians this sort of thing please, it may not be as simple as it looks or sounds. Not everything makes the news.

They come from Chernyakiv a small town with a population of about 10,000. This is what happened to their town on the 7th March They left and then spent time in a refugee centre in Warsaw sharing a gymnasium with about 700 other people... safe but not sustainable especially as more and more people flowed over the border.

To those on this thread asking "what did you expect":

• I did not expect the London rental market to become even more pressurised than it was before. 200 applications for a room in a shared house is now quite normal. That was not the case in February (although it was competitive)
• I did not expect my local authority to employ a team of people who have offered absolutely no help or support to me or my guest. Every time I ask my liaison officer a question i am given an incomprehensible and meaningless answer or told to find out myself and let them know the answer
• I did not expect it would take four months to receive the first payment of £350. I was out of pocket by several times that after paying for flights and accommodation for a young woman who was vulnerable and alone in the Czech Republic when her visa took six weeks to process because of gross incompetency with the visa process
• I did not expect a massive spike in food and energy costs. More people in the house costs more - just because the maths of £350 a month worked in February or March doesn't mean it works now.
• I did expect my guest would hustle, right from the start, and take jobs to pay her way. Instead, it took her two months to find any paid work, and then it was just a few hours while she pursued a pointless quest to get a job as an events co-ordinator. She wasn't an events co-ordinator in Ukraine, and my best attempts to explain to her that she would need to start at the bottom and work up here were ignored.
• I did expect her to save when she finally found a full time job, and explained the importance of that very clearly. That is not - as far as I can tell - happening.
• I also expected her to be realistic about rental options, after someone explained it to her. I know it is disappointing to find out that you can't live in a one bed flat on your own in zone 2 in a nice area and that the reality is likely to be a studio flat or room in a shared house well outside the centre, but to keep pursuing that because someone on Telegram got a place in Pimlico is naive and frustrating.

I will not abandon my guest. If she needs to stay beyond 12 months I will (reluctantly) offer her a rolling tenancy arrangement but it will be at the market rent for a room which round here is about £900. She can choose to pay it or not.