Sussex, Essex, Kent...all the same to me...

Rivers of (Polish) blood

The one-party nation. Chris Bryant is the new labour immigration bloke. Not distinguishable from the old tory immigration bloke. Here’s what makes me a bit (just a little bit) sceptical about this rubbish: both my parents are immigrants. I don’t have a drop of UK blood in my veins (so, Enoch, I may have to contribute to your predicted rivers, but, being white, maybe not). Yet neither of my parents or I have ever claimed a penny from the state.

Here’s something that taints my views:

An Easter in the seventies. I was at university, I was playing football four days a week (University Wednesday and Saturday, London rep team (or training with the Sunday lot if no rep team game) Thursdays, local team Sunday football) and was properly knackered. I’d worked and paid in through stoppages (where appropriate) from age fourteen (washing up in the Cwmbran Indian restaurant, stopped cab fare home but given a meal before leaving, and also some invaluable lessons that Chris Bryant needs to learn – people are people, we’re all the same) through to age eighteen (various part- and full-time jobs) and thought I might, as plenty of my peers were doing, sign on for the holidays.

Form-filling isn’t for me. Particularly filling in five or six forms all with name, address, religion, inside leg, etc, repeatedly at the top. Then being told I needed to attend an interview to be held at the end of the Easter break, too late. I told the Job Centre bloke where to shove his interview, his jobsworth attitude, and where we could meet up for a punch-up. I remember slamming down the phone, ringing an employment agency, and getting called in for a chat. I spent that Easter working (‘working’) at a halfway house for juvenile offenders, doing the night shift. The pay was massive, for a student. The kids (and I wasn’t much more than a kid myself) were difficult, some situations were difficult, rising to unpleasant, to dangerous (one boy was in there for taking and driving away, repeatedly, including a police car, two girls under-age had local drug-dealer / dodgy character boyfriends.

So. I was my immediate, immigrant, family’s only (failed) attempt to ever claim a penny from the state (a state that bleeds me dry paying for a royal family’s privileges, moat cleaning, duck islands, hugely overpaid civil servants, Mars bars and porn for MPs, etc) and here’s the thing:

Chris Bryant costs the taxpayer £67,000 a year, plus various ad-ons and expenses probably taking him to over £100,000 a year.

For this we get an opposition mush in an expensive suit and shoes, saying exactly what the guys he’s supposed to be opposing say.

It may not exactly echo the rivers of blood speech, but the underlying philosophy is still there: you lot are taking our jobs, just because you cost less / go sick less / are more reliable.

Well, shall we examine performance and relate that to pay? Shouldn’t an immigration bloke have a basic awareness of geography? Shouldn’t he know that Redbridge is in Barking and Redbridge, in Essex, and definitely not in Kent? If we’re paying civil servants more than £100,000 a year, shouldn’t they be adequate in their roles?