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I agree with your first para 100%. No doubt the guy had paid his National Insurance contributionss for years whilst in the UK.

GB is only doing what Lawson did in the late 1980s and I well remember paying 15% mortgage rate and business loans of 9% over base rate. That's why I reckon "New Labour" is crypto Tory - that and their total subservience to the fool in the White House.

People of my generation were taught to respect their elders on the basis that we would expect respect when we were parents/older adults. 40 and more years on many young people treat anyone over 50 as coffin dodgers. There is no respect for skills and experience.

In the Thatcher years, in many companies, anyone over 37 or so was deemed "over the hill" and was made redundant.

In the 1990s it became evident that the pensions we had been paying into for 30 years or more were worthless, then we were ripped off by the great endowment scam.

Governments of both major parties are equally to blame.

People of my generation and far sighted younger folk, see little future in the PC ridden UK - PC until you complain about bad service from companies where management skills and experience were dumped on the altar of youthful, cheap labour and where any complaint, even in the mildest terms, is treated as a personal attack on the over educated, under experienced, talk centre robot, briefed to do only 3 things:

Handle a call every 3 minutes at a minimum
Ensure you are obstructed and kept away from Managers who can't manage
Blame you no matter how much the company is at fault or, at best, blame "the computer" which seemingly programmes itself to make errors.

Try to complain and they hang up on you. Example:

I had a problem where a company had credited me twice after months of phone calls to get a credit for faulty goods. I rang to speak to the senior person who, eventually, had sorted the original problem as their letter stated "any further problems please do not hesitate to contact me".

Unfortunately the only phone number on the letter was the call centre number, Lo Call in the UK but treated as a non geographic number and charged at mobile rates from my country of residence.

After asking the girl who answered to be put through to the letter writer I was asked to outline the problem. Explaining I was phoning from abroad, stating I didn't want to go through everything twice and quoting the letter, I was firmly told if I didn't explain I would not be put through.

When I said I'd had months of explaining the original complaint to people at her level without success and I would only talk to a manager, I was told that all queries had to be dealt with by call centre staff.

When I pointed out that evidently it took a manager to sort certain problems and there were things beyond the competence of call centre staff, I was told I was being personally offensive and was cut off.

I didn't bother contacting the company again and kept the extra ?350 they credited me with.

That was 8 years ago and Things Just Haven't Got Better"!!

I'm sorry Sam but I should have pointed out that I have been a part-time student whilst working...and paying taxes. The qualifications I was obtaining was in relevance to the job I was working in.

However as a Briton I can go wherever I like. That's what the EU is all about.

I think Enoch Powell was a modern day Nostradamus as regards Britain's, and especially England's future when he said THIS speech. He only got the time scale a bit out, that's all. Rather than before the end of the 20th Century, he should have said the beginning of the 21st Century would mark the end of the British and especially the English culture. I hear that Romania will be the next vulture circling overhead and taking scraps out of us as if we were some rotting carcass. in their cases I've heard that it's the benefits that they're coming for plain and simple.

I think he means that thing we lost after the Tories got in. Did you know I don't even know who our neighbours are, and I've lived here for over 4 years!

The European UNION is meant to be exactly that - a blending together. But just imagine if the original 48 had denied rights of access and work to Alaskans and Hawaiians when they joined the United States - and yeh, OK I know they don't let Puerto Rico in and the citizens of the protectorate are very much second class citizens in the US, so perhaps the UK and other European States are just following Uncle Sam - again.

It doesn't matter if 12,000 people leave, (I believe it is next month) when 2 more States join the European Common Union, they have already got thousands of appicants already trying to request access to the UK, ready for when their country's membership is official, so they will sponge off of our health service, work opportunity's & limited available property's. Oh & last week, there was an announcement regarding the 2012 Olympics, the Contractor who won the deal to build the new stadium for 2012 has already decided to employ 2,000 Spanish people to build the stadium, he will bring them over specially to do the work, as he sees they are more cost efficient to employ. So if this is true & it goes ahead, we can see EVEN MORE Jobs, Homes, & NHS Funding being taken away from the british people.