UKIP second in Eastleigh...anyone from Eastleigh care to comment?

[SequinsOfEvents]

Bit tongue in cheek but wowsers! 11,000 votes! Crikey!

I am living abroad at the moment and am pleased to be! Can't come home with current political situation....how depressing

[niceguy2]

All well and good about the Polish people working hard etc and I don't dispute that but where does that leave the English/British people who do work hard and want jobs. Isn't that stereotyping the British people implying that they are lazy etc.

To a certain extent yes it is stereotyping but like with most stereotypes there is an element of truth there.

There are of course many British people who do work hard. But there are also a great many who lack the self discipline, mentality and ethics to keep down a job.

I'm sure that in Poland you will find some people who bimble along without much ambition, happy to do whatever.

But of course they are the very same people who can't be arsed to move to a foreign country either.

So what we're seeing is the most motivated coming over to the UK and understandably taking jobs from locals who are unable to show the same level of motivation.

[feeltheforce]

I am not anti immigration if it is managed. There are loads of people who could bring so much to this country. But there are of course quite a few that come and don't. So it needs to be looked at.

I hate to say it but NF does have a point. Example, I've just lost my child benefit due to Dh earnings. A Polish guy I know has a wife from whom he is separated living in Portugal. She has never stepped foot in England. They have a child and you've guessed it.....she gets child benefit from our government. How is that right? and I guess that is the tip of the iceberg. I have got lots of Euro blood in me and nothing against the Poles or any others but you can only manage so much and surely people already residing in this country should come first.

[vesela]

It's right because it's his child and he's working in the UK. Child benefit is paid to the dependent children of people working in the UK. What's wrong with that?

[vesela]

I wouldn't expect to get UK child benefit, obviously, but then I'm not working in the UK. Instead I get to deduct my daughter from tax here (in the Czech Republic).

[DolomitesDonkey]

It's interesting to me, as a realist with a "go-getting attitude" that both OP and zamantha who she commended live in a Left Wing Utopia where they believe that immigration should be welcomed - after all, Zamantha says "some of my best cleaners have been immigrants".

Crikey - champagne socialism at its finest - "All hail the minimum wage worker to do all those "icky" things - Little Jocasta doesn't have ANY migrant children in her class! so I say it's not a problem."

[DolomitesDonkey]

Whilst I believe in open EU borders - I think perhaps we need to consider how far east (and south) we intend to go. With Turkey's admission in contention - who might be next? Syria? The Lebanon? Down as far as Egypt?

We simply can't let everyone in who "needs" it. No matter how sad their sob story. Take for example the awful treatment in Africa of the homosexual population - life imprisonment or death. But, if one in ten of the population is gay, can we really take in 100 million gay men from the east coast of Africa alone? Can we take every hungry child globally? These are hard decisions, ones which perhaps people don't wish to actually have to think about - it's easier to say "come, come" than to sit and think about the realities of our global population.

[alemci]

Then maybe there should be more atttention given by politicians to clamping down on the men who marry someone from the subcontinent who does not speak English etc and it may be a forced/arranged marriage etc. Perhaps he has to prove he can look after her and not just go off etc when he loses interest. It is not really helping the economic situation by having more incomers who rely on benefits.

Vesela I don't agree with the CB situation that Feelforce outlines. Does the mother claim CB in Portugal as well

[lainiekazan]

Yes, alemci, I do have a problem with these marriages.

I was at Heathrow recently and a flight from India came in. I couldn't help noticing the numbers of very young pregnant girls who got off this flight, all accompanied by older women. Were they brides from India? Or were they girls who had been taken out of school here and sent off to India to get impregnated in order to facilitate the entry of other people? It really made me feel uncomfortable, because, as I said, it wasn't one or two, but twenty or so.

[alemci]

I think it is the tip of the iceberg Lainie.

[feeltheforce]

vesela Sorry but I still feel the CB situation is wrong. My DH earns good money - he pays a lot of tax and we get bugger all in return. As a SAHM I really welcomed my CB. But anyway I accept that if it helps people in the UK then cuts have to be made but really, why should someone who doesn't speak English, isn't British and has never been to Britain (and is never likely to from what I can tell) get a proportion of our tax revenue. It's not like her father is British either. All because of EU rules. Do you really think for one minute that if DH went to Portugal/Poland or anywhere else that I would be getting CB from that country? I can tell you having lived in Italy that that is definitely not the case.

Like alemci says - who knows if the mother is getting CB in Portugal or even Poland (where she originates). She may be remarried (I haven't asked).

This is what UKIP tap into and they have a point.

[vesela]

Why should the fact that she's never been to Britain come into it, though? Her child's father is working in the UK.

If your DH went abroad to work, then depending on the situation you'd get either CB from the UK or CB from that country plus a top-up from the UK if the UK's CB is higher.The various scenarios regarding who pays CB when one parent is working in another country etc. are here.

David Cameron won't be able to change the freedom of movement rules without leaving the EU.

[feeltheforce]

I understand your point about my friend working in the UK but he only works part-time so I am guessing (though not sure) that he also receives some kind of benefits to top up. My point is he is not a UK citizen, he came here because by his own admission you can get more in the UK. Then we are now also supporting his estranged family who live in another country. We just cannot afford this. Clearly we can't because otherwise my CB wouldn't have been stopped this year.

[indahouse]

That's just mean, feeltheforce.

[alemci]

Not really. We are in so much debt and we need people here who are economically viable. If he works part time and needs top ups it seems too generous.

[feeltheforce]

I don't see what is mean about that. I am looking at immigrating to Australia at the moment. Our visa was dependent on us being able to support ourselves and not being any kind of burden on the state at all. But in the UK we seem to allow lots of people to come here that are nothing but a burden on the state. I honestly don't think anyone objects to people who come here and work, pay their taxes, add to society and the economy. Like someone said before we are a nation of immigrants.

The reason UKIP are making gains is because many people feel the EU has taken away our control of borders and immigration. I'm not at all anti EU in fact I am very pro. I love that we can all travel round and work but I wouldn't expect another country to fund me if I couldn't fund myself.

[vesela]

feeltheforce - I know what you mean, but it's kind of like the old poor laws where parishes refused to deal with each other's vagrants! There comes a point at which it makes more sense to administer these things at a higher level.

Imagine you were living in another EU country - children all at school there - and you lost your job. You were reasonably confident of being able to get another one before too long, but in the meantime you really really needed unemployment benefit to get by. Would you up sticks and go back to the UK to claim it, or would you stay put and be glad that you were able to do so?

[feeltheforce]

vesela you are quite right and it's a great idea. The problem is that the partners are unequal. Some countries offer more work, higher wages and lots of benefits and others have nothing much to offer (which is why their citizens often bowl up here).

I'll give another example. In our little market town we have a permanent fixture of a Romanian gypsy who sells the Big Issue. She has done for the last three years. I have got to know her and she is a nice lady. But again by her own admission she is one of a group of Romanians who live in a town 25 miles away and they then fan out every week to sell the Big Issue in various smaller towns. She talks about using food banks and obviously must be on benefit as must the rest of compatriots. And this has been going on for years. No effort to retrain, get a job and her English is still no better. I know she must have come from a bad situation and I know gypsies have it hard in Romania. However, once again the UK is looking after other countries citizens.

[vesela]

I didn't agree with the ruling that selling the Big Issue constitutes self-employment for the purposes of claiming benefits, but from next year whether it does or not isn't going to matter, since she'll have the right to be in the UK regardless. And I don't see why she shouldn't be, when she's an EU citizen - it's not the UK looking after other countries' citizens, it's the UK looking after other EU citizens.

Lots of gypsies come from the Czech Republic to the UK in order to be able to work (they are massively discriminated against here on the job market - they had jobs under communism but it's now very hard to get one as a Roma) and so that their children can go to an ordinary school instead of being sent straight to special school, as usually happens here (then they go to the UK and the children who had to go to the "special schools" turn out to do well). Very far from ideal, obviously, and attitudes towards Roma here aren't changing much despite years of money from EU social funds. Pressure is being put on the Czech government to stop the special schools thing, but the sanctions are never enough.

[alemci]

If someone sells big Issue they become self employed and get an NI number thus opening up an avenue to benefits etc. I think there was a thread on here a while back about a women who took the council to court about it etc.

Yes Feel the Force it is definitely not a level playing field. It doesn't seem reciprocal and we have more to offer.

[BIWI]

WTAF?! Do you realise how very, very, very racist your post is? What horrible words.

Still, at least you are honest ...

[Xenia]

The proposal for immigrants from within the EU to have to show X years of NI contributions which is Germany's solution and one the UK is seriously looking at is wise as it would comply with EU law and would be applied to people in the UK and outside. As I am in favour of people working hard I also think it would help those who don't work in the UK and choose not to (and yes they do exist). That requirement would then help if a lot of Bulgarians and Romanians come over and did not work and had no history of paying national insurance contributions in their own land.

As for none EU immigrants there are fairly tough entry requirements now.

NHS tourism is not as well controlled as it might be and the recovery rates for UK student loan people who disappear abroad and don't pay and those who are due to repay to the NHS for their NHS care when they leave is not very high. It can be quite hard to recover money abroad.

[vesela]

Xenia - it's very, very, very hard to get a job if you're a Roma person in the Czech Republic. There is very blatant discrimination on the job market, and from what I've heard it's no different in Romania and Bulgaria. And yet in the UK they manage to get jobs straight away. In other words, having X years of insurance contribution at home isn't a guide to how employable/hardworking you are.

[vesela]

and what about people straight out of university?

[vesela]

sorry, forget that - I see now that you're talking about having to have made X years of NI contributions before you can access benefits.