Foreign drivers using loophole to pay only £100 for car insurance

[Old Greg]

They'll never take me alive!

Exactly.

[xchaotic]

Evening Standard:

That's written strongly in how EU works - you're competing on the European market so a Romanian insurer can insure all kinds of cars, likewise the British one.
I'm pretty sure Brits can go and register and insure their cars in Romania.
When you go on a contract to Belgium, do you really want to have to re-register and insure your car every 6 months, regardless of whether it is cheaper?

In this regard UK has a long way to go - on the mainland there aren't any borders to speak of - you see the signs of entering another country but that's it.
If the fuel in France is cheaper than Germany then people living to the border will drive to the French gas station, nothing really wrong with that, just the market at work.

[xoggoth]

The work ethic I see in these Poles will almost certainly be passed on to their kids

No, it almost certainly won't. People follow society and while we have an ethos that discourages responsibility by too ready welfare, an excessive concentration on rights that ignores duties, all these migrants will go down the same hill.

Try checking rather than assuming. For example, a couple of big pluses for the Muslim community used to be an avoidance of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol related hospital admissions for are now just the same as for the rest of us and drug use is fast rising to the same levels.

[Old Greg]

No, it almost certainly won't. People follow society and while we have an ethos that discourages responsibility by too ready welfare, an excessive concentration on rights that ignores duties, all these migrants will go down the same hill.

Try checking rather than assuming. For example, a couple of big pluses for the Muslim community used to be an avoidance of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol related hospital admissions for are now just the same as for the rest of us and drug use is fast rising to the same levels.

So you're saying that we're achieving social integration?

[Mich the Tester]

No, it almost certainly won't. People follow society and while we have an ethos that discourages responsibility by too ready welfare, an excessive concentration on rights that ignores duties, all these migrants will go down the same hill.

Try checking rather than assuming. For example, a couple of big pluses for the Muslim community used to be an avoidance of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol related hospital admissions for are now just the same as for the rest of us and drug use is fast rising to the same levels.

In other words, Britain's gone rotten and it's turning its immigrants rotten?

You might be right there.

[xoggoth]

Indeed. It will be paradise.

[sasguru]

Indeed. It will be paradise.

So what you're saying is that the Polish second generation will be just like the Brits except with a few Z's in their names.
Where's your beef?

[d000hg]

No, it almost certainly won't. People follow society

My wife's a teacher in a school with a fair few Polish (or similar) kids and reports that they are hard-workers as a group. Also it's plain obvious that culture is passed down, how many polish kids born to Polish parents in the UK don't speak Polish?

It likely gets watered down over time/generations depending how insular their community is... but then when they are insular you complain they're not integrating (with our society of laziness).

[xoggoth]

We suffer their drawbacks of lack of integration today, our own drawbacks of a complacent lazy society tomorrow or after a generation or two anyway. Not to mention a greatly overcrowded country. It sounds less than sensible; we should be tackling our own problems like welfare, booze and unmarried mothers rather than continually spending billions on trying to integrate others.

And subsidising some of them via our taxes. As I said, check out the realities with the ONS rather than parrot the permitted line. Welfare, prison population, health and social housing levels are worse for some major ethnic groups and we are not talking percentage points but multiples in some cases.

We should also build on the major progress we have made in the last hunderd years, things like the secular society, equality of treatment for women and gays and humane treatment of animals. Influence is a two way street and those gains are under threat or at least slowed by imported third world attitudes. To some extent even by the rise in Catholic influence from Eastern Europe, it is not the easy going Christianity of the CofE.

PS Specifically on Poles/Hungarians I would agree they are not a major problem. Romania (original subject of this thread), Lithunia rather different.

[shaunbhoy]

it is not the easy going Christianity of the CofE.

Is that the same "easy going" christianity that even to this day forbids the heir to the throne marrying, or even deciding to become a Catholic?