s Day flight from Romania. His moment of fame is over and he vanishes into the shadowlands of Britain's serf-labour force. He joins that great army of the underpaid to clean, care and cater. Briefly, he stood in Luton arrivals as a woolly-hatted emblem for a host of issues that reflect none too well on the state of Britain: anti-immigration fever, Europhobia, benefit-scrounging hysteria, a living reminder...
n' mix arrangement with other countries, with no repercussions for international trade or millions of Brits living outside the UK. The fiction that a country can be a more effective player on the global stage by becoming insular and xenophobic. The insidious fiction that what stood between us and prosperity was a hypothetical Bulgarian. No doubt it will be claimed that measures, taken at the eleventh...
Cross-party group calls for calm dialogue after Tory council leader blames Roma in London for disruption and crime Phil Disley ...
s needed is protection at work and a crash housing programme It's the influx that never was. New Year's Day, we were told by rightwing politicians and press, would be the day the floodgates opened. Romanians and Bulgarians, free at last to work in Britain without restrictions, would come in their hordes. Beggars and benefit scroungers would be battering on our doors. The country would be swamped. But...
Now that Romanian and Bulgarian citizens are able to move to the UK to seek work, an alliance of Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrats has warned that politicians' anti-Roma rhetoric is already inflaming community tensions. Has this debate helped those planning to migrate to the UK feel welcome? ...
s Day, David Hanson, the shadow immigration minister, said the government has ignored calls to strengthen existing legislation that could stop employers from undercutting British employees' wages by recruiting from overseas. His comments came as the first Romanians and Bulgarians with unrestricted access to the UK labour market began to arrive amid a deepening political row. All political parties are...
Populist politicians' attempts to fan the flames of hatred rely on our hardwired suspicion of outsiders Romanians and Bulgarians will gain the same rights as other EU citizens to move to Britain from 1 January . But for months the British media have been running alarmist reports about the imminent influx from these countries. What is it about this group of people that makes them seemingly so dangerous...
Recently we asked Romanians to show us more about themselves and their country. Now we'd like to find out what Romanians – and Bulgarians – think about the UK. Share your experiences of living or working in the UK via GuardianWitness Caroline Bannock Guardian readers ...
s this minority one is really concerned about but it is this minority that has this really big impact." Roma make up a tiny proportion of the population of Romania and Bulgaria but some politicians have concentrated their warnings about the end of transitional controls on the potential for more to enter Britain. This week an adviser to the Romanian prime minister hit back at scare stories, arguing...
s borders are opened to immigrants from the two newest EU countries. Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, spoke out after 90 Tory activists wrote to the prime minister urging him to apply emergency powers before controls on immigration from the eastern European countries end on New Year's Day. In a letter to David Cameron, the Tory grassroots campaigners said the government had the ability to stop...
Conservative grassroots writes open letter to David Cameron arguing UK is in "exceptional economic circumstances" ...
s central university district. "That little line at the bottom of the job ads, you know? The one that says: 'Apply only if you are eligible to work in the UK.' We won't need to worry about it any more. Because, well, we will be. Eligible." An engaging 23-year-old with a first-class computer sciences degree from Essex University, Vernescu came back to Romania last year to look after an ailing aunt who...
m a huge follower of Manchester United. I also studied Wittgenstein at university and he stayed in Cambridge for most of his professional life. I think I have a cultural affinity with the UK. It wasn't at all hard to find work, and within a month I had found a job in a coffee shop in north London. Unfortunately, although they had promised to sort out the paperwork, a year later they had a phonecall...
s director of children's resources, responsible for ensuring that every child in the city has a school place, Lewis can point to colourful pie charts about Peterborough's changing population, and detailed breakdowns of the character of each of the city's dozens of schools. What he can't tell you is how many additional school places he will need next week, when the restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians...
Migrant welfare debate a sideshow™, says research “ video UK news theguardian.com Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off Jump to content [s] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US AU Your activity Email subscriptions Account details Linked services Profile Mobile About us About us Australia team Contact...
s 'rivers of blood' speech A Tory MP leading the opposition to lifting controls on Romania and Bulgaria has called for Vince Cable to step down from the cabinet after the business secretary warned that Conservative rhetoric on immigration was reminiscent of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech. Nigel Mills said: "It would be very hard for him to sit around the cabinet table having effectively compared...
s Eastleigh byelection stated that "the EU will allow 29 million Bulgarians and Romanians to come to the UK". That number was derived by simply adding together the two countries' populations. The Tories are clearly panicked. Consequently, as of last week, the Conservative position on EU enlargement (long seen by the Tories as the best bulwark against political union) began to shift. David Cameron is...
David Cameron and his team at the ready in case Santa turns out to be Bulgarian Martin Rowson ...
s Rivers of Blood speech • Cable also calls for end to damaging public spending cuts The bitter personal poison seeping into some of the coalition's key policy disputes was revealed on Sunday when the business secretary, Vince Cable, accused the Conservatives of grubbing for Ukip votes with irresponsible and populist rhetoric reminiscent both of Enoch Powell and prewar antisemitism. He said the Tories...
anxieties are a reality – look at the polls if you doubt it – and are bound to be greater in difficult economic times. They must obviously be answered. But Mr Cameron is not doing that at all. Instead he appears to be running scared of the lies of the rightwing anti-foreigner press, of the rise of the Ukip balloon, and of the nastiness of his own most xenophobic backbenchers. Mr Cameron is not displaying...