Are you ready to welcome the apparent flood of bulgarians and romanians....

Are there surplus jobs in the South then?

I live in the SE and around here there are a many applicants for the few jobs going. The price of houses is ridiculous and rents are very high. If a young person was to leave the family home in the North to come here and pay rent they would have a hard time making ends meet. If the young person had a family already he would have to maintain two homes

It is worth a Romanian, say, coming here where the minimum wage is about 7 times what they can get at home. Even so, we probably see the more adventurous ones.

Good to see your comments BlueBelle and Absent. Petallus makes a good point about 'the more adventurous' young Romainians coming to the UK, and other countries to try and build a better future for themselves. It takes a spirit of adventure to leave the security of home, however tough things may be there.

In today's Observer there is an article about housing benefit problems.

Fergus Wilson, who owns 1000 properties to let in Kent, has served eviction notices on all his tenants who receive housing benefit. He says he prefers Eastern Europeans who default on their rent less than single mothers.

A relative is a single mother and although she works full time she receives a small amount of housing benefit. She could not compete with a situation where a number of EE workers share a house and the rent between them.

I was just answering your question, Jess, having lived and worked in the north of England for the last 26 years.
Many families are very close-knit, and I think the cost of accommodation in the south is certainly a deterrent, not only to those who want to work, but also students - many choose to study at local universities.
Of course some leave home, but it tends to be the better off and better educated, who save up for a year of travel, rather those who have achieved less academically and can't find work here, just going to London on the off-chance of a job.
I really can't comment on family ties in Spanish or Polish families, or how the young people arrange and pay for their accommodation when they arrive.

Everyone is getting their knickers in a twist and no proof yet that there is a problem Everyone needs to calm down and realise that these folk are only doing what WE taught them to do - seek your fortune where you may, look at a historical map and see how much of the world WE had infiltrated how many countries did we wipe clean ??? how many indigenous races did we walk all over in our quest to improve our lot???We all need to think of the bigger picture and stop being so quick to jump

Do you really think if all the immigrants went home tomorrow all our young folk would have jobs, do you think our education system would go back to what it was, do you think our NHS would return to being the envy of the world, its not immigrants that have ruined all those things its successive governments with their greed, their cuts, and their stupidity.

Your'e on a roll this morning BlueBelle - Well said.

I agree wholeheartedly with the 'spirit of adventure' comment. When we arrived in the UK, in our early 50s, having left a comfortable home in SA, we rented a tiny studio apartment for 18 months, we loved it and were very happy but of course there were huge adjustments to be made and we did have a plan for the next move. We then bought a comfortable one bedroom flat with a tiny garden and lived there for 3 years, adding to our savings all the time and subsequently bought an ex-council house where we are still living after 8 years.

We have done our house up, as have our Korean (mum with 2 students sons) and Eastern European (young family) and Ghanaian neighbours (extended family), and we all live happily alongside council tenants who have lived here all their lives. Husband guerrilla gardens in front of our house for the whole community's benefit. Life is good!

There are 2 young single mums living in our enclave, the one works at the local Robert Dyas and apart from a few public rows with (apparently) the father of her children, leads a quiet life. We are on nodding terms. The other one has been pregnant 3 times since we moved here and I have not yet seen her with a baby. She doesn't respond to my nods!

I think we may be talking about two (or more) different things here. Immigration has been going on for centuries and has undoubtedly brought benefits. Economic migration on this scale is a relatively new thing under EU regulations and is placing great strain on services, in some areas more than others. It's no use harking back to what has happened in the past, this is a new scale of problems and needs new solutions.

Yes jane I have met at least one young person from a northern village who could not even cope with a week long training course in the south (which would have been the first week of a good job).
And I know it takes money to move - deposits for rooms, money to live on before the first salary etc
But it is weird. Why, why , why do all these young Europeans have more "get up and go" than the home grown variety? Do we just get the cream of the crop coming here and back home there are lots of others that would miss mammas cooking too much?
Yes Petallus there are. There may not be jobs in small towns and villages but the evidence is plain that the economy is doing well in the south but not elsewhere and where the economy is doing well, employment is expanding. When i try to recruit a graduate in the south you would not believe how difficult I find it, despite the fact that it is an interesting job, in a good company, with good prospects and an ok salary. It begins to feel as if UK graduates will only apply for jobs in a very limited range of locations. Despite the fact that 43% of young people go to university these days.

Off topic, I know, but I have to respond to Grannynots comment about seeing someone pregnant 3 times and not seeing a baby. That worries me very much. If I had seen this I would on the phone to someone.
Call me a busy body, call me what you like, but something bad could be going on here.

Jess why are you singling out young people from the north. Are there not other economically deprived areas in the UK where young people are unemployed, or are those young people more likely to move to the south in your opinion?

Yes I am living in one night owl. Bit long winded though to say the north and wales and the west country and parts of scotland too probably and probably outer east anglia as well. There is a huge chunk of the UK population north of Birmingham.

Here is an interactive map where you can see JSA claimants by borough and age group. Barking and Dagenham is the only Greater London borough that is average - all others are below average. Further away you get from London the worse it gets as a wild generalisation. N Ireland particularly dire. I am not sure whether young people living at home are allowed to claim JSA?
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/interactive/theme-pages/index.html

hi petra sorry, I should have qualified that with the statement that the "woman who knows everything that goes on" on our estate, has told me that social services are involved and the assumption is that the babies are taken into care. Sad, isn't it.

By the way, when we left SA it was also with heavy hearts to leave our families behind - and we couldn't afford the accommodation either! (Hence starting out in the studio flat). Husband would tell me I have to focus and endeavour - that's how I got through the times when I felt low.

And come to think of it - my first job where I was sent by an agency was also one that probably they couldn't fill - I went to work as Business Manager in a large community drug team that specialised in treating injecting drug users. I was a "babe in the wood" but I knuckled down and stayed there for 3.5 years, and the queue of "clients" to say goodbye to me the day I left filled the reception area.

There is a program called 'The Truth about Immigration' on BBC2 this Tuesday which should be relatively reliable and balanced in its reporting.

It seems that until now the BBC have been taking the decision to withhold certain facts which they felt would cause a massive negative reaction in the population

JessM not sure about the situation at graduate level. I was thinking more of semi-skilled/unskilled labour.

JessM, if all the bright young folks from the north, and other deprived areas, behaved like Dick Whittington and went south,looking for gold, what would be the impact on the rest of the country. We all need aspirant young people in our areas, don't we?

I feel too much is centred around the London area. Look at the fuss when Radio 5 moved to Salford, how would these bright people manage living in whippet land. it seems they have found it reassuringly pleasant, lots of open spaces, and property prices lower, even in leafy Wilmslow and Didsbury that in the areas of London they previously lived in.

What about a shift from the belief that everything that matters has to happen in the South East. Apologies already if this sounds too sharp, but I really am tired of the north south divide becoming, well even more divided.

My OH's family had to leave SA at the time of Apartheid, as the new rules meant they could not live together. They did need help at the beginning, but worked very very hard to overcome difficutlies- despite so many problems. All the children did really well, and re-paid the initial social help debts over, and over, and over again- and so is the next generation.

Why is it that some people, in the face of huge adversity, become more and more determined to overcome them- and others just seem to use them as an 'excuse'- with some families being on benefit for generations? The answers are truly complex- and I hate the tabloid's answers.

I can totally understand why people hesitate to discuss this, due to the dreadful history or the Work Houses, etc, and due to the just as dreadful exploitation of the tabloids with the ensuing vilification of some groups (single mothers come to mind). And yet, why is it totally taboo, in the UK, to discuss the issues, without being acused of having a 'tabloid' thinkset.

Why do so many deny the fact that some 'poor' are indeed more deserving than others- when we all full know it is the plain truth?

Jess I agree with Iam64 about the migration or otherwise of young people to the south - surely it would be better to invest in establishing business and enterprise in other parts of the country, to build thriving communities.
Young people are needed in any communiity to keep balance, I would have thought.

Although I basically agree with what you say granjura I have just two reservations.

One is that I don't think we can generalise from previous times to today, when opportunities for betterment are not as plentiful as they were.

Secondly, yes, you could say some poor are more deserving than others. However, I think all CHILDREN of the poor are equally deserving.

Well yes of course it would be better if the north were regenerated. But this is not easy to make happen. People have got to want to start or relocate businesses and there has to be a reason. For the time being i see no signs that government give a tuppeny damn - or enough of a tuppeny damn to try to give tax breaks or similar to deprived areas. Instead didn't they dismantle regional development organisations in the bonfire of the quangos?
Ask a member of the coalition about this and they will have one answer - HS2.
So as far as individuals are concerned nothing is going to improve in the immediate future and the choice would seem to be stay where you are and either have no job, or a job that does not use your qualifications or be prepared to try to get a job outside your geographical comfort zone.
After all, in the industrial revolution the ancestors of today's northerners migrated to where the work is.
I do wonder (she mused, provocatively) whether many parents these days actually would prefer to have their kids hanging on at home than moving away for work.

So agree on the children Petallus.

Watching the most moving 'Moving on' with Sheila Hancock on BBC1 now.

That should be interesting, Pettalus. 'The Truth about Immigration' on the BBC. Its only in the past couple of years that they have mentioned immigration.

I agree with JessM that there are miles and miles of beautiful countryside without a building in sight BUT certain towns get overstretched. The services like schools, hospitals, emergency simply wont be able to cope in certain areas. I like to judge a person on what I see, providing I can talk in English to them. I went round the local supermarket and there seemed to be a lot of foreign tongues.

Well said, Iam64 and Jane re the North-South migration. The saddest places in the North (which incidentally is far from all grim!!!) are those depleted of their brightest and best young people, and where family support networks have been ripped apart. Of course the next step is - businesses won't move to those areas because they don't have the bright young people...