[Osem]

There are lazy, dishonest and just plain nasty elements in all races and nationalities. Yes there are a proportion of people here who feel the country owes them a living and scrounge off the rest of us but the same applies elsewhere, including Eastern Europe.

There are also a group of people here whose commitments (mortgages, rents etc.) make it far more difficult for them to accept lower paid jobs. Those who come here for a few years and intend to go back to Poland for example have an added incentive to live cheap and save knowing that what they earn here will go very much further back home. It's for this reason that my brother in law (an Engineering Graduate) from E. Europe used to work in Italy picking fruit for several months every year. The locals there wouldn't do the work so he and his peers did and what they earned, although low by Italian standards, subsidised him very well back home for the rest of the year. Sound familiar?