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Live in France ?... No different from a Romanian coming to the UK


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In many ways I don't think it has changed so much but what has changed is the introduction of laws against discrimination, particularly race. When things get tough one thing the Brits are good at is looking for somebody else to blame. In the old days it was simple, spot somebody of a different ethnic background and colour. Well you can't do that now for fear of being punished (and rightly so). By picking on a group that looks the same as you means you can say your not racist which I suppose technically your not but in essence your doing the same thing. Easy targets and all that.

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As a sideline I wouldn't be surprised if there are more Romanians working in the medical system in France than there are British.

My neurologist is from Bucuresti and the anaesthetist who was the only person who could get my PAC to work as it should in the regional Cancer centre in Montpellier is also Romanian.

There are also many serving as GPs in rural areas of France where French  nationals  would be 'bored'..

On the other hand I have only met one British person, a male nurse at the local hospital.

Of course there is more incentive for qualified Romanian medical personnel to come to France than there is for English, financially and also because Romania has had a tradition of French speaking Universities such as Iasi

This is not a silly "Romanians good Brits bad" comment. It is just a corrective to the blanket condemnation.

I am an immigrant here as are others who have permanently moved from other countries.

I refuse the lazy gutter press use of the word as an insult.

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The vast majority of people don't support discrimination or racism in any way shape or form. What a lot of people do dislike is immigrants who come to the UK, or any country to do nothing but hold out their hands. If that makes them or me racist in the minds of small minded people who get their information from Television or the Daily whatever I couldn't give a flying fig.

                Immigration is essential, but to be fair to the host country and the immigrant it's a two way street, enter by all means but offer something in return in the way of ability or sheer work ethic, then the locals will welcome you with open arms as they do now. I say this as someone who has worked all over the world,  lives in the London area and has probably spent more time among diverse nationalities than anyone pontificating from the deep country side of France. By the way I have been married to an Southern Irish woman for 40 years; and I have never ever seen the often quoted sign "No Irish"

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Here is an example of what I mean about how things are presented.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2458323/David-Cameron-urged-slash-benefits-EU-migrants.html

Down the page on the right is a box that says "The cost of our open borders". Well the first thing is of course is that the UK does not have open borders with the EU because it is not a member of the Schengen group of countries. So if EU citizens are entering the UK and if there are any limits like there currently are against Romania, Croatia, Cyprus and Bulgaria and they are getting in to the UK then perhaps somebody somewhere is not doing their job properly.

There are allegedly 611,779 "non active" EU citizens living in the UK but I wonder what the UK considers "non active". Some may be children of EU nationals working in the UK, some may have retired there? Who knows how exactly they come up with the number. Retirees for example may well be receiving a pension etc from their original country just like many Brits in France. The number really needs to be broken down rather than making a sweeping statement like that.

The NHS costs, well it is not just us Brits in France arrive clutching the old E104, E121 or S1 as it now is which means actually the UK pays for their healthcare so the money is reimbursed (eventually) especially with respect to pensioners. The S1 is a European form and available to all those living in the EU who want to move or retire to another EU country once they meet certain criteria. So the actual cost may appear to be correct but you might need to deduct the money the government gets back from other EU countries under this scheme. Is that reflected in this figure, again nobody knows.

Percentage of Job seeking EU immigrants, does not tell anyone who out of all those that arrive this way actually get jobs. Both my neighbours daughters arrived that way and both were working within weeks.

Perhaps we are lucky because some of us have experienced moving within the EU and what is involved but many in the UK obviously have not so they will take these figures at face value and no doubt think it is terrible when in fact it might not be as bad as they think if it is explained to them.

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"Enter by all means but offer something in return". I'm intrigued. How does this apply to retirees to France, Spain,Portugal? Yet by default, British "Expatriates" expect to be welcomed with open arms. In spite of their inability (in many,many cases) to  either adapt or learn the language. Oh yes, right. They spend money. Yet most, within the pages of forums such as this one, can be heard rejoicing that moving to France has reduced their tax bill. So they're apparently not over-anxious to get stuck in and pay too much into the national coffers.

Let's be honest. The bad apples are a tiny minority, no matter what the media would have us believe. The condemnation of an entire nation (Romania) on the basis that some (or, if you get your facts a bit mixed up, as has the sainted Mr Farage, ALL) of them might want to come to the UK is both irrational and unworthy of the British as a nation, and the British "popular" press in particular.

Like you, Nick P, I have lived and worked abroad for most of my adult life, having spent my career travelling to over 70 countries around the world. I also spend the majority of my working life in the UK in direct contact with foreign nationals who have moved to the UK, and I can, after over 10 years of doing what I now do, count on the fingers of one hand the people from other countries whom I have met who were not working or paying taxes. I've met a fair few Romanians in that time, and I can assure you that, from the woman with a PhD in Physics who learned English from scratch in 2 years and passed GCSE English and Maths (Yes, maths...with a Physics doctorate) because it was a prerequisite to her being able to become a teacher here, to the au pair who has just graduated from Kingston University with a qualification in Early Years childcare, they would all get really sick and tired of being equated with the Roma  who DO milk the system and generally behave unacceptably.

Close to where I live, Slough council had to set up a special unit because Roma were flocking to the town, and usually in the form of pregnant 14-year-old girls who would plonk themselves on the town hall doorstep and - in limited English - explain that they KNEW the council was obliged to house and care for them. Terrible, unacceptable.....but how would anyone here deal with a pregnant, foreign child??? There will always be situations like this, and they're wrong, no doubt about it. However, I'd still like to think that, within reason, I live in the sort of civilised society that will try to help such people, however much I might disagree with or resent them imposing their problems on the UK. More importantly, I'd like to think that I live in a country that's not so far up it's own backside that it can accept that just because we're British doesn't mean we're welcome everywhere, and just because someone's foreign doesn't make them a pariah.

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[quote user="You can call me Betty"]"Enter by all means but offer something in return". I'm intrigued. How does this apply to retirees to France, Spain,Portugal? Yet by default, British "Expatriates" expect to be welcomed with open arms. In spite of their inability (in many,many cases) to  either adapt or learn the language. Oh yes, right. They spend money. Yet most, within the pages of forums such as this one, can be heard rejoicing that moving to France has reduced their tax bill. So they're apparently not over-anxious to get stuck in and pay too much into the national coffers.

[/quote] I'm not an ex-pat myself; nor am I interested in ex-pat Brits, my dislike is of people taking advantage of the UK, if people in other countries want to complain about ex-pats thats their call and another thread. Still as you mentioned it, at least; as you say they spend their money, plus I don't see what the inability to adapt or be fluent in another language in France has got to do with people arriving in the UK purely for getting handouts from the state. As for paying tax, well everybody; you and I included only pays what is asked of them, and even then will move heaven and earth to get that reduced, but at least even the unhappy to be paying brigade are still paying in something, not just taking. I reiterate if you want to come to the UK to make a better life for yourself and your family and participate in society; as far as I'm concerned your welcome, but don't expect me to welcome those who only want to abuse the system.
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The problem is that there are rarely any verifiable figures of exactly how many people come to the UK and ',,,abuse the system...' as you put it NickP.

Everyone has a view, but that is usually based on the rubbish that is printed in papers like the DM or quoted by people with an axe to grind like Nigel F.

It's very easy to stir up feelings against a group based on very little. And like every story such as this, the numbers everyone KNOWS are abusing the system grow with each retelling.

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Again, I'm intrigued. How many people, seriously, does anyone think come to the UK "Purely" to get state handouts? And, seriously, is there anyone here with direct experience of how difficult that actually is in practice?

I foolishly believed that we'd moved on from the time where everyone professed to know someone who knew someone who'd personally seen with their own third-hand eyes a Johnny Foreigner being welcomed at Dover by someone from the DSS with the keys to a new Beemer and a four-bedroomed council house for them. Clearly, that's a myth that still hasn't been stamped out. What a pity.

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[quote user="You can call me Betty"]Again, I'm intrigued. How many people, seriously, does anyone think come to the UK "Purely" to get state handouts?

[/quote]

And are they actually getting it from the UK state? If Brits can go to another EU country and continue to draw their UK unemployment benefits (or whatever they are called these days) via the system in the country in which they move to and receive disability payments, winter fuel allowance etc, all from the UK then it is not implausible that many of these people are doing the same in the UK?

Likewise if we are to believe the likes of the DM which surely must print some truthful articles now and again then there are thousands of Brits in the UK claiming for things, getting houses etc just like these Johnny Forigners. Of course you can't throw them out the country but shouldn't something be done about them as well? I mean, again if the likes of the DM are to believed, we have generations of families that have never done a days work in their lives, mothers with seven or more children each with a different partner. People falsely claim invalidity benefit as well. Are not these people also a scourge on the tax paying Brits that need expunging in some way?

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Superman,

I wouldn't touch either the Mail or the Express with a bargepole. We got the Independent from the day it came out until Chris Blackhurst ruined it. We now get the i because it has Indy articles and only costs 20p, or £45 a year with vouchers.

David

(from the real home of Superman, Cleveland, Ohio)

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[quote user="You can call me Betty"]Again, I'm intrigued. How many people, seriously, does anyone think come to the UK "Purely" to get state handouts? [/quote]

 Betty if the government or anyone else could issue that statistic,  they would then know who and how many, and logically they would be able to stop it. So the answer would be zero, eventually. I'm sure if you delved deep enough there has to be a guess from some department or whatever. Of course whether they would then admit it is another ball game

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''"Enter by all means but offer something in return". I'm intrigued. How does this apply to retirees to France, Spain,Portugal? Yet by default, British "Expatriates" expect to be welcomed with open arms. In spite of their inability (in many,many cases) to either adapt or learn the language. Oh yes, right. They spend money. Yet most, within the pages of forums such as this one, can be heard rejoicing that moving to France has reduced their tax bill. So they're apparently not over-anxious to get stuck in and pay too much into the national coffers.''

I have seen ( I think ) a figure of some 300,000 British retirees being quoted as living in France - I may have this figure wrong.

If correct, and assuming (reasonably I think) that each of those retirees injects Euro 10,000 per year into the French economy the net effect is E 3 billion /year.

Those same retirees will also be having their medical costs paid to France by the UK Government.

I just can't see any costs to France being incurred by those (so-called ) 'expats'. It doesn't actually matter if they are fluent in French or not. They contribute massively to the various local economies.

The crux of the matter in the eyes of the UK 'man in the street' is how much to immigrants cost the UK taxpayer. They can't see any payback for the increase in population, the increase in NHS use, the increase in social housing problems and the ''apparent'' increase in crime.

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[quote user="dwmcn"]

er, Frederick,

Didn't Forsyth send somebody to France to assasinate DeGaulle?

David

[/quote]

A good read won an award in 1973  and made a good film  too

  :       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQdYPtm2u2k

For those who have forgotten it

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Net migration quintupled from 50,000 in 1997 to 250,000 in 2010.

Nearly 4 million immigrants have arrived since 1997. Net migration fell

to 176,000 in the year to December 2012 as government policies took

effect.

A migrant arrives almost every minute but they leave at only just over half that rate.

We must build a new home every seven minutes for new migrants.

England is already, with the Netherlands, the most crowded country in Europe, excluding island and city states.

The population of the UK will grow by over 7 million to 70 million in

the next 15 years, 5 million due to immigration - that is the

equivalent of the current populations of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow,

Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Oxford.

To keep the population of the UK, now 62.3 million, below 70 million,

net immigration must be reduced to around 40,000 a year. It would then

peak in mid-century at about 68 million.

Revised September 2013 

From the web site of Migration Watch .......The place where the DM and The Express take their leads from that some here have lots to say about .

Given the EU have instructed the UK to close down smelly coal fired power stations ...and they have ...leaving us with very little spare capacity for power supply ...Never mind the  jobs they are taking . At the rate of arrival lets hope threy are told to go easy on the electricity or we will soon all be in  the dark !.

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Oh Jeez. So now Immigrants are to blame for using the Leccy.

It's no use. I can only marvel at the self-centred, blinkered, self-satisfied attitude of the "me" generation. And, incidentally, at the fact that pensioners are the people I was taught to respect and look up to as a child. I certainly wouldn't suggest to MY children that they espouse the ethics of many of today's older generation.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

Book was MILES better than the film.

Forsythe writes very well, in proper sentences, and not in text-speak like lots of modern books these days.  Plus he can tell a story and make it exciting as well as credible.

[/quote]

I've not seen the film, so I can't comment on that, but I thought quite a bit of the book's plot was rather creaky, and some bits of the narrative were totally mysterious. Fr'example, can you explain this bit?

Investigating the timetable of his assassination he had consulted a calendar to discover that dusk fell on August 22nd at 8.35, seemingly plenty late enough even if De Gaulle was late on his usual schedule, as indeed he was. But the calendar the Air Force colonel had consulted related to 1961. On August 22nd, 1962, dusk fell at 8.10. Those twenty-five minutes were to change the history of France.

And I don't think that dusk "falls" either, it's night that does that. Unless you're a Swedish heavy metal band, of course. He probably means sunset, but how there might be a 25 minute difference from the previous year beats me.

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[quote user="You can call me Betty"]Oh Jeez. So now Immigrants are to blame for using the Leccy.

It's no use. I can only marvel at the self-centred, blinkered, self-satisfied attitude of the "me" generation. And, incidentally, at the fact that pensioners are the people I was taught to respect and look up to as a child. I certainly wouldn't suggest to MY children that they espouse the ethics of many of today's older generation.

[/quote]

I jest !

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Inflammatory is a very emotive word, I think that you are getting a bit too excited Betty. Until you mentioned it I had never heard of Migration Watch, I now have seen the website and to be perfectly honest I found it to be quite neutral, It really only consists of a collection of media reports on immigration. After seeing MW I was alerted to another site 'Balanced Migration', have a look yourself and if you object and think that Frank Field is inflammatory, then I think that you may not be the reasoned person I thought you were. What you must realise is that this is a forum and most of the members like myself; in the main are not scholars or journalists, just ordinary people who sometimes may not express them selves very clearly in the way we write things down, but do have concerns as to how our system is being stretched. I don't think that those concerns are worthy of the suggestions of racism or of being uncaring.

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There are numerous stories of the UK trying to remove failed asylum seekers and being thwarted by either the EU or the UK system.

Perhaps as well there is a difference between those escaping persecution and those who simply see the UK as a place to make more money - presumably those who should claim asylum in the first EU country they arrive in and not once they have passed through several EU countries until they arrive in the UK (and no doubt those other EU countries are very happy to see them pass through.

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If you do a little research on Migrationwatch, Nick, you will find that in 2010, and again in 2012, they produced reports showing a direct correlation between youth unemployment among UK nationals, and immigration. Both these reports have been discredited but they were both published in extenso, largely cut-and-paste, in the Mail, Express, Telegraph and Times.  The "media reports" you're probably referring to are just regurgitations of data provided by Migrationwatch themselves. They've also erroneously reported the benefits to the UK of migrant workers and had to backtrack on that one as well.

There's plenty of evidence that the figures they've presented on immigration numbers overall are accurate, but there's a big difference between that and drawing conclusions that aren't.

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[quote user="Araucaria"][quote user="sweet 17"]

Book was MILES better than the film.

Forsythe writes very well, in proper sentences, and not in text-speak like lots of modern books these days.  Plus he can tell a story and make it exciting as well as credible.

[/quote]

I've not seen the film, so I can't comment on that, but I thought quite a bit of the book's plot was rather creaky, and some bits of the narrative were totally mysterious. Fr'example, can you explain this bit?

Investigating the timetable of his assassination he had consulted a calendar to discover that dusk fell on August 22nd at 8.35, seemingly plenty late enough even if De Gaulle was late on his usual schedule, as indeed he was. But the calendar the Air Force colonel had consulted related to 1961. On August 22nd, 1962, dusk fell at 8.10. Those twenty-five minutes were to change the history of France.


And I don't think that dusk "falls" either, it's night that does that. Unless you're a Swedish heavy metal band, of course. He probably means sunset, but how there might be a 25 minute difference from the previous year beats me.
[/quote]

Oh Araucaria, how your post has entertained me![:D] and I thank you for posting it.  However, I am not sure whether I'd be very popular for replying and straying way off thread but the temptation is just too great! I see you are a purist, a technical sort of a person.  My OH is one of those too and he NEVER reads fiction.

Me, I don't mind too much if there is a bit of artistic licence, AS LONG AS in the long run, I am suitably amused....yes, I know, although I am not blonde, I do have my blonde moments [:-))]

I suppose he means "sunset" as in sunset times, and as you have pointed out.

As for the Swedish heavy metal band, now THAT is a completely new subject that I have learned about.  I can't wait till I am talking to someone of a younger generation and I could off-handedly mention this band so that I can appear [8-|] and not be thought to be some sort of very large and scaly mammal!

 

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