Immigrant Pun

Earlier today I read an article about Eastern European immigrants who have the nerve to come into this country and work really, really hard for long hours, to earn an absolute pittance. It focussed on the buzzing, multicultural metropolis of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire - apparently a popular destination with Eastern Europeans of all nationalities (that's right - they're not all Polish). These plucky travellers, who probably really wish they'd bought a copy of Lonely Planet beforehand, are busy debunking immigrant myths left, right and centre:

1. They're taking our jobs
The majority of Slavic immigrants into Peterborough are employed in farmers' fields, picking butternut squash, amongst other hard-to-peel delicacies. The reaction of the slightly more indiginous dole queue - they'd rather sign on. The next time your office racist (we've all got one) complains about the amount of 6'6" tall guys with shaved heads on the Tube, point out that if British people got off their arses and did the work, they wouldn't need to be here.

2. They're sending the money back home
Out of an entire room full of immigrants assembled in a local church hall, presumably just before the doors were barred and the national anthem started to loop through the PA, only one admitted that they had no interest in remaining in the UK. Many of the people interviewed have set up home in the UK - nice to see they're being made to feel welcome. It's not like sending money home would make them bad people - I'd like to see a few of the natives mentioned in point 1 venture out to Bialystok and work the fields to support their families. Some of these people won't even do data entry.

3. They're spongers
As if I needed to go on, I'd just like to point out that many of the veg pickers work 60 hours a week at £7 per hour. I bleat about doing an extra half-hour, and I get nearly double that, and don't even really hate my job. Yet.

So anyway, on to today's fact, which Claire looked up for me on this nifty website, and which is so coincidental and perfectly fitting for a topic she didn't know I was going to write about, that it made my bum go a bit funny:

The word 'slave' comes from Slav, a collective name given to people from Eastern Europe.

That's right, satire is alive and well on Quest For Knowledge...