"Because they keep coming over here taking our jobs!"

[LookAtMeGo]

Did anybody see this on the BBC news when a woman who looked to be about 80 uttered this phrase when asked why she had voted Leave.

Was I the only one to have seen the irony in the fact that as she said this she was having her nails done by an immigrant in a nail bar?

pointythings
That is dreadful, and must be heartbreaking.

Even if the funding formulae were able to keep pace with rapid population change, where is the additional money needed going to come from? There isn't a corresponding increase in tax revenue for many reasons, including houses with numerous families not generating extra council tax to workers not paying much by way of income tax, either leginately (through low paid jobs) or because of working cash in hand

Non immigrant friends of mine have parents in their eighties who retired in their sixties and have lived off the state ever since. No one mutters to them about benefits though in fact it is the ageing population which is responsible for the load on the NHS and the state.

But when a hard working immigrant gets sick or old, or ( heaven forbid) has children, why is it that the country seems to resent that they should also receive benefits? Not to treat workers with respect and dignity is to promote the notion that not al men are born equal and slavery is desirable.

But of course, what am I thinking, Englishmen won the lottery of life and if someone else from another country appears to do just as well or perhaps better, the national psyche gets really disturbed.

So sick and tired of seeing threads like this, how can anyone find this EU topic the least bit interesting!!

My view on this whole nonsense is England is a big country and one of the wealthiest if people want to come here they should be allowed to.

So many people complaining about immigrants come here, they are given a place to live and benefits, and some even get employed quickly

What kind of life is being housed by the government/council and getting benefits and maybe working for a low wage??

That's something I would never want.

"i think we have come far if the solution to the housing crisis is to reduce PEOPLE rather than built HOUSES"

Yes Dora a thousand times this

Of course we can afford to build houses to home everyone, we're the (nearly) 5th largest economy in the world

Non immigrant friends of mine have parents in their eighties who retired in their sixties and have lived off the state ever since. No one mutters to them about benefits though in fact it is the ageing population which is responsible for the load on the NHS and the state
Yeah, bloody old people. Why don't they just fuck off.

Snowy, why do you keep on with repeating the nonsense? I'm an immigrant from Eastern Europe. Yes, it was hard at the start - I spent the first 2 months living in a house with 15 other people. Yes, my first employer took advantage of me not understanding what the going rates were and underpaid me (all legal, above min wage but too little for the role). However, as soon as I understood how things worked, I moved into a lovely property + negotiated fair pay with my employer. No immigrant coming here thinks they are a piece of poo, a second class citizen who deserves to be underpaid and live in awful conditions... And I don't know a single immigrant who's been here for a while and is putting up with such treatment.

hippie, no need for old people to fuck off but we need to stick to the facts without getting emotional.

an ageing population puts a strain on the nhs. As does an increase in obese people or an inceease in older women having pregnancies. These are just facts and numbers without judgements attached.

The governement simply needs to fund the nhs in such a way that these modern day challenges can be faced. For funding you need taxes. For taxes you need young people in work. Eu migrants put more in than take out in benefits so it really is a win win for everyone.

Non immigrant friends of mine have parents in their eighties who retired in their sixties and have lived off the state ever since. No one mutters to them about benefits though in fact it is the ageing population which is responsible for the load on the NHS and the state.

Exactly what type of sentiment and from whom are you trying to provoke with that twattery?

The "they all live in HMOs, under cut British workers" etc is mostly nonsense, there are SOME people living in HMO etc but the vast majoirty of the 4 million EU immigrants are not living like that, and to make our like that is true is very, very disingenuous.

So essentially, you are using a small minority of immigrants to tar all with the same brush, making sweeping generalisations and yet the leave camp keep crying that your not all racists. Making sweeping generalisations = racist.

Exactly what type of sentiment and from whom are you trying to provoke with that twattery?

I took it to mean the PP was pointing out that the largest group of benefit recipients are those on the age pension. And that the two times in most people's lives when they use the resources of the NHS are - at birth (all children born in the UK use a large proportion of our shared resources, which is appropriate, but parents shouldn't be smug) and in the last 18 months of our lives (in old age).

Not really ageist twattery, but pointing out that immigrants are a convenient scapegoat but not necessarily an accurate one.

If we're looking at the largest proportion of benefit recipients, it's old age pensioners. We don't need to demonise them to defend the economic benefit that immigration brings. But we should recognise that immigrants are demonised.

Foggy I didn't say ageist twattery. I just said twattery.

And describing retirement as 'living off the state' really is a new and advanced form of nastiness that would have been completely unacceptable to express a few short years ago. Quite rightly.

I don't disagree Just5 - I thought maybe that the PP wanted to make a rhetorical point. People who go on about "immigrants" in the xenophobic way we've heard over the last few months, need to be confronted with some actual facts - and the fact is that the major recipients of state benefits in the UK are recipients of the age pension. It's as it should be - security in old age is an important part of a civil sane and compassionate society.

Except that this whole EU campaign has been a campaign of avoiding facts and dissing experts. A new dark ages ...