I have promised to do whatever it takes to help Nigel Farage’s Ukip emerge the winner

[TheFaQQer]

And I thought OG was banned? Why is he allowed back as SB?

ElectricChair was permabanned, and you're still allowed here.

[vetran]

Well there are not enough fooking builders down south, so clearly peoples jobs aren't being taken. We've booked a builder for October, that's the earliest anyone can do. Building speciality rates are extortionate. Good brickies are on £100K a year. Hardly starvation rates in an area which is supposed to have been hit disproportionately by Eastern European, specifically Polish, labour, what?

maybe the builders are choosy who they work for?

or maybe builders went out of business in the lean years when everyone hired cheap Polish builders.Only the good or canny survived, they are now getting their own back?

[sasguru]

maybe the builders are choosy who they work for?

or maybe builders went out of business in the lean years when everyone hired cheap Polish builders.Only the good or canny survived, they are now getting their own back?

Bollux. There's always been a shortage of good tradesmen - just recently its gone ballistic. Which is why that UKIP poster of a builder with a begging bowl is absolute and total crap - like most of what they say.

[darmstadt]

I'm too excited about the glorious new chapter to worry about anything else.

What glorious new chapter? I suspect half the voting populace don't actually realise that this election is for your local councilor or MEP and not MP. In other words you're voting for someone who has the power of deciding that the parking on the local high street is now going to cost 2 quid a minute and someone who just wants to go to Brussels on a jolly. The local elections cannot make any impact on Europe and you're only voting for the same old, same old (and with UKIP, I suspect the emphasis is on 'old') and with the current copy of UKIP MEPs not actually having any effect on the EU then I suspect there won't be much change there. Surely there must be some form of adult 11+ before giving people the vote? When they come around canvassing for your local elections, remember to ask them about local issues...

[vetran]

Bollux. There's always been a shortage of good tradesmen - just recently its gone ballistic. Which is why that UKIP poster of a builder with a begging bowl is absolute and total crap - like most of what they say.

never had any trouble getting good builders. But I have also been offered cheap 'Polish' builders who were half the price.

[KentPhilip]

Which is why that UKIP poster of a builder with a begging bowl is absolute and total crap

I suspect that guy was intended to portray an unskilled low-wage manual worker rather than a skilled builder, and the former are at risk of being made unemployed by european immigrants.
Even the latter are at risk of having their pay rates reduced by immigrant competition. HOWEVER I would support the latter because those (skilled) immigrants on an above average wage are then supporting the country by paying more taxes than they (per capita) are consuming.

[sasguru]

never had any trouble getting good builders. But I have also been offered cheap 'Polish' builders who were half the price.

The Poles were always at the bottom of the food-chain. Ok for painting and decorating, maybe putting in a bathroom at a pinch, basically things you could do yourself if you could be bothered.
And in that role they performed a good job and were a huge improvement on the unskilled cowboys who hitherto had plagued that bottom end of the tradesmen ladder.
But they never ever threatened the skilled tradesmen - you wouldn't get Poles to do structural work, would you?

[doodab]

It seems to me the people getting displaced are more likely the low end workers in the likes of macdonalds, pret, hotel receptionists, workers on assembly lines in factories and that sort of thing. OTOH the rest of us have been subject to competition for years and done OK so it seems a bit disingenuous to suggest they shouldn't.

[doodab]

But they never ever threatened the skilled tradesmen - you wouldn't get Poles to do structural work, would you?

Why not? They have buildings in Poland and they don't seem to be any more prone to falling over than English ones are.

[speling bee]

What glorious new chapter?

The one promised by UKIP's donor Mr Sykes:

The time has come to take back control of our country and the right to govern ourselves. May 22 is our chance to catch a tide that can restore our freedoms and carry us forward to a glorious new chapter in our nation’s history.

As Tank says in The Matrix:

Mmm. Very exciting times.