Italian Jobs for British Workers

Rhoda Klapp

Just because something is a good thing, it doesn't mean it can't have a bad outcome if taken too far. Bussing in workers with no opportunity for locals to apply for jobs they can do, that's going too far. The benefit is to Total, not the UK, not the locals. Have the terms of the original contract been released, one week in? Don't you understand that things are different when jobs are hard to come by?

Kevyn Bodman

'freedom of movement and labour has been one of the great EU achievements.'

What are the others?

The Euro has been convenient for me when I've been on holiday in Spain, haven't spent all my money and then travelled into Italy. But that's a convenience not a great achievement.

The EU has not kept the peace in Europe, democracy has.
Margaret Thatcher came up with what should be known as Thatcher's Law when she said that democracies don't go to war against each other.

The Channel Tunnel is a great achievement because train is so much better than plane, but it's not an EU achievement.

So, what are the great achievements of the EU?

McLovin

The difference, you great Scottish cretin, between Cumbrians/Geordies and Italians, is that only the former fry mars bars in batter. That makes them eligible for any job in the UK as far as I'm concerned. Have a little sympathy for the natives, cheesehead.

Ray

The greatest achievement of the EU has been to hoodwink British taxpayers into parting with colossal sums of money in order to subsidise French farmers and to buy their agricultural products in preference to cheaper food from our Commonwealth cousins.

Oh, and to destroy our own once thriving fishing industry whilst allowing the Spanish to vacuum up our seas until there are no fish left to catch.

Alf Tupper

You argue that a job is a job and it doesn't matter if someone from Aberdeen takes it or someone from Italy; all that matters is that it's a job that needs doing.

The fact that Aberdeen is a part of this country is of no relevance.

Alleigance to a country has no validity. We must see all EU citizens as our own. The drawing of lines and borders is morally wrong and a part of history.

Your argument taken to its full, leaves me wondering why there is a line drawn around the EU? Which moral argument sees to it that Europeans are 'our own' and all the rest are to be kept out?

ndm

-- Which moral argument sees to it that Europeans are 'our own' and all the rest are to be kept out?

The Italians have a word for the "rest" - extracomunitari. I have a sneaking suspicion it is actually a euphemism for African.

SWS

What a load of nonsense. Are you British or European? You can be both, or either, or neither. But the two are not the same thing. One's countrymen are not the same as one's continental allies; England has had the free movement of labour from its birth, as a natural right and circumstance of community and nationhood; the EU has had it by legal treaty for about a quarter of a century. Just because the two are now equivalent, does not mean they are interchangeable. We are not citizens of the world, or of a super-state, or of nowhere. We are British. British things mean more to me than European things. British people mean more to me than European people. It is quite the same, for them, in reverse. We are not unnatural floating beings with no allegiances, history, comforts or preferences. The late Victorians and early 20th century certainly went too far in race identification; but this over-compensation into amorphous holographic non-identity is just as pernicious and absurd.